all right part two let's keep going all right we're going to start at Mount Mariah so Genesis 22 many of us would be familiar with this story this is when Abraham has already received his promised child right the birth of Isaac is in Genesis 21 so now we're in Genesis 22 and this is when God tests Abraham by asking him to take Isaac to the top of Mount Mariah and SA ACF him as an offering to the Lord so it says in 22:1 sometime later God tested Abraham he said to him Abraham here I am he replied then God said take your son your only son whom you love Isaac and go to the region of Mariah sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on the mountain I will show you so the next morning Abraham got up loaded his donkey took with him his servants and his son Isaac he cut wood for the burnt offering and set out for the place that God showed him so in verse 8 it says Abraham answered Isaac God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering my son and the two of them went on together he you know sets up everything to sacrifice his son and in verse 11 it says but the angel of the Lord called out to him from Heaven Abraham Abraham do not lay a hand on the boy do not do anything to him now I know that you fear God because you have not with withheld from me your son your only son Abraham looked up and there in a Thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns and then it says he went over took the RAM and sacrificed it as an offering instead of his son so Abraham called that place the Lord will provide and to this day it is said on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided all right so this is really really important it's actually out of that that God said I will bless you I'll make your descendants as numerous as the sky they will take possession this is important in verse 17 your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies and through all of your children or offspring All Nations on the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me all right now we know that to make a long story short of course God did provide the lamb for the sacrifice interestingly that Abraham says God will provide the lamb right now in this situation what did God provide he didn't provide a lamb he provided the RAM for the sacrifice but we know that eventually God did provide the lamb for the sacrifice and even as the Book of Genesis is written most people would would say that this is a book of Moses and so God did provide the lamb for the sacrifice um and sorry as as um the time of this writing in verse 14 Abraham called that place the Lord will provide and to this day it is said on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided what will be provided on the mountain of the Lord see when Jesus was crucified he was crucified at a place called gtha now gotha was Mount Mariah on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided okay let's talk about Mount Si in the Tabernacle so kind of picking up in this same place you've got Abraham right and and when God promised him I'm going to make a great nation out of you what did he also talk about when he said this nation's going to come out of you but they're going to go into slavery in Egypt for 400 years but after that time I'm going to bring them out and I'm going to you know give them the land that I've promised to you and make a great nation out of them all right now once God does that the people go into Egypt of course they're there making bricks um that's a theme that we see again the bricks in order to build our own mountains our own structures now they're brought through Exodus you can read in the book of Exodus they're brought out of Slavery to become a nation set apart for God okay to become the people of God who would be a people set on a hill right this this called out assembly so you'll start to you'll start to see familiar themes again continuing throughout scripture this called out people Assembly of God to be set apart in worship to Yahweh to provoke the Nations back into Covenant With God all right so God setting aside this Covenant people lifting them up as a as a symbol of who he is right it's not for their sake necessarily it's so all might be regathered it's the ingathering of the nation s that was dispossessed in Genesis 11 right as all the nations were sent out and they developed their own worship systems to the God's um ly of the Nations and so what does God even say to Abraham through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed and so through this people they're meant to bless all the nations of the Earth by drawing them back to the good God the only good God by the way which we will talk about later the gods of the Nations they're not pretend yes they are false gods but they're not pretend they're real beings and they don't love you the way that Yahweh loved you right they they rule in false Authority they rule harshly and they rule with hatred and in Rebellion to Yahweh and their leadership is not um is not enjoyable and that's where you get the pain and the hardship and the different things that we experience in this life life and when we talk about Spiritual Beings we'll get a lot deeper into that understanding but Israel was meant to be a nation in Covenant with the one true God who loves you who loves me and it's a very different kind of leadership that he has than the cruel gods of the Nations all right a people that God was putting on display to provoke the Nations to jealousy and a turning away from the false rulers and the idolatry that they had entered into all right we have Exodus 19 Yahweh descends and he invites Moses to meet him okay so we have the people of God being led out of slavery LED out of Egypt and God says I'm bringing them out so that they will worship me right so he's bringing them out to teach them how to be his sons to teach them how to be his people in Exodus 19 says Yahweh descends and he invites Moses up Mount Si all right so Moses gathers all the people to hear from God remember this is the The Experience where the people say okay you go hear from God we're we're terrified right so fire consumes the mountain and the mountain is set apart as holy okay now the people are afraid and they reject intimacy with God right they ask Moses to be an intermediary for them they say you know what we're terrified we don't we don't want to hear God directly have him speak to you and then he you can tell us what he says all right so Moses he receives the Ten Commandments you know there's a lot more that happens in the story that I won't go into because it's not relevant just to understand the concept but most of us probably already know many of those details but Ezra receives the Ten Commandments in the Mosaic law and then that's kind of how God begins to train the Israelites to be his people instead of the behaviors and the lifestyle that they had learned in Egypt right because he he's bringing the people out of Egypt but they still in essence are Egyptian in the way that they understand how to live and not even Egyptian Egyptian slaves right so they have behaviors they have they have a way of life that is not like a son of Yahweh they have a way of life that's like a son of Egypt so he has to bring them out of Egypt first so there's a physical exit from the place of bondage right from the from from slavery but then there has to be a walking out of getting all of the Egypt that has permeated culture and life and and our being taking that out of the person and so that's the process that God begins to take them through as he reveals to them his law and begins to train them in his ways and begins to provide a mirror of his reality into their reality all right so in Exodus 24 we find a very very interesting occurrence and it's easy almost to read straight past it but when you actually really think through it you're like wow that really happened but I want I want us to read in Exodus 24 it talks about Moses Aaron nahab and abaho right so it says God says to Moses take these three guys along with 70 elders and come up to meet me on the mountain and so it says in verse n Moses Aaron nahab and abaho and the 70 elders of Israel went up so they go up Mount Si it says and then they saw the god of Israel under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli and as bright as the sky but God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites they saw God and they ate and drank now that that's a that's a story man that is a s like think about it who's read that before and thought wait wait a minute so they went up to the top of a mountain sat with God and ate as he descended in Heavenly reality onto the top of the mountain and created this overlapping space between the heavens and the Earth right we see a foreshadow here lapis lazuli is a it's a blue color it's actually the color blue that's used in the in the Israeli flag it was this very unique color that you could get from crushing um I I believe it's shells don't quote me on this look it up but it was a very very difficult it was snail shells or something it was a very difficult color to to get um but they would this color was very special because it resembled heaven and as as Yahweh appears to eat and drink with them he's standing on a pavement made of lapis loule it's it's incredible when you actually imagine this and interestingly we'll talk about this a little bit deeper too when we talk about the gods of the Nations but um in Babylon the Ishtar gate was created with the color lapis lazul because it was this color resembling the heavens and resembling Ishtar so you end up seeing many of these symbols and these things that God has established among his people you end up seeing threads of these things in the other nations and how other gods have tried to take the things that belong to Yahweh and make them a part of their own worship all right so you see this overlap this temporary encounter because it was only once that we see in Scripture that 74 people people are invited to meet God on the top of a mountain to have a feast to eat and drink with him on a Heavenly apparently a Heavenly table because there's no table at the top of the mountain standing on a pavement that has come and and appeared out of a Heavenly realm it's incredible but this is a picture this is a picture of who God was calling the people to be as his people people right when we talk about Ascension who may Ascend the hill of the Lord those who have pure hands and a clean heart those who've not given themselves over to Idols right God is actually wanting a people who will eat and drink with him who will be with him union relationship he wants a kingdom of sons who will come and meet him on the mountain this is a picture of that in Exodus 25-27 Moses continues up the mountain and God begins to show him a pattern right he commands him to follow it exactly and it's the pattern of the Tabernacle so God repeatedly says to him be sure to do exactly as I've shown you and he emphasizes this over and over and over again throughout these chapters right the people are instructed to create a tabernacle to to house the presence of God among them so we know from many prophetic accounts in scripture the throne room of God um that the temporary you know home like of the throne room of God you know especially in prophetic literature and things like that we know much about what the that throne room looks like um and we know that the temporary homes these mirrored places that God establishes on the earth these Dwelling Places of God such as the Tabernacle the Temple they are Earthly mirrors of a Heavenly reality so we see throughout the instructions the reflections of both this heavenly throne room that we know is a real realm that God takes many people into encounters we see that in Ezekiel we see it in Revelation we see it in Daniel we see it in Isaiah right we see these these these elaborate Throne Room encounters but we see instructions that resemble that when the in the Tabernacle and in the temple but also we see in imagery of a garden we see instructions correlating to a garden right the design of the Ark with the Cherub guarding the presence or guarding the top of the the ark just as the angels surround the Throne of God we have the lampstand being designed to resemble a tree with seven Flames that Isaiah later describes as the Sevenfold spirit of God which is the spirit of Christ the Holy Spirit right but it's it it's a tree tree of life looks exactly like the tree from Eden we have these three Progressive courts the outer Court the inner court and then the holy of holies which resembles the place where God dwells right and we see Recreation here again as the people are exiting their 40 years in the wilderness right there to increase and to take possession of the land or actually this is the this is the recreation I mentioned before so we see this 40 years in the wilderness and then they are now to increase and take possession of the land just as in Eden the people of God Were Meant to increase and take possession of a Promised Land a place of inheritance as they're able to take one territory at a time right let's talk about Jerusalem Mount Zion because we hear this language a lot through scripture um especially in prophetic literature you hear Mount Zion all the time or return to Mount Zion Mount Zion my holy Place Joel 2 for example says blow the trumpet in Zion sound the alarm on my Holy Hill the land is like the Garden of Eden so we have this comparison between Zion and Eden but anytime Mount Zion is referenced it's actually just another name for Jerusalem and so Mount Zion is Jerusalem Jerusalem is Mount Zion and Jerusalem is a central location throughout scripture right it's referred to as the city of God it's it's the chosen location where the king ruled David's Tabernacle was established there the temple was built there it was the central place of Jesus's Earthly Ministry and the central place of the Jewish people it was the physical location or it is the physical location where Jesus will return through the East Gate as he comes to rule again and take a seat on a throne for a thousand years right the the rule of Christ that will return so Jerusalem is a very very very important Central piece of our understanding of the kingdom of God Mount Zion in Ezekiel 55 it says thus says the Lord God this is Jerusalem I have set her at the center of the nations with lands around her psalm 13213 to4 for the Lord has chosen Zion he has desired it for his dwelling saying this is my resting place forever and ever here I will sit in throne for I have desired it so when do we first see this location become significant let's go to Genesis 14 so many of us might know the story of Abraham and lot so when God calls Abraham out of the babyon bonian plane he brings his son or sorry his nephew lot with him and lot um you know kind of goes off on his own because they're both getting too numerous and so he sends lot to go kind of find his own way and lot chooses the you know chooses the the plane that's full of lush green and Abraham takes another way well lot gets into some trouble and Abraham has to come rescue him and so he goes he rescu lot out of you know the trouble he's in recovers all this stuff and then it says in verse 13 or sorry in um verse 14 no let's start at um verse 17 after Abram returned from defeating cordr and the Kings allied with him the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the valley of Shabah that is the King's Valley then MDC king of Salem brought out Bread and Wine he was Priest of God most high and he blessed Abram saying Blessed Be Abram by God most high creator of Heaven and Earth and praise be to God most high who delivered your enemies into your hand then Abram gave him a tenth of everything the king of Sodom said to Abram give me the people and keep the goods for yourself but Abram said to the king of Sodom with a sworn oath to the Lord most high creator of Heaven and Earth I will accept nothing belonging to you not even a thread you won't say I made Abram Rich I'll accept nothing and then he you know goes on to let everyone else have their share here's the thing that I want us to see so this place that ends up becoming Jerusalem is this place called The Valley Of Kings where Abram ends up encountering this character this is the first time that he appears in scripture called MDC king of Salem which means peace right Jerusalem city of Peace Salem so he encounters him he brings out Bread and Wine he was a priest and a king and he blessed Abram which means he is aead above he blessed him and then Abra gave him a tenth of everything so I want us to keep that in mind that this king of Salem who brings Bread and Wine a priest and a king appears in this place that becomes Jerusalem we'll talk about that a little bit more later in the book of Hebrews but Psalm 48 describes Jerusalem great is the Lord the most worthy of Praise In the City of our God His Holy Mountain so Jerusalem compared to a Holy Mountain which it is set on a mountain beautiful in its loftiness the joy of the whole earth like the far reaches of the north is Mount Zion the city of God the great king God is in her citadels he is known to be her tall Fortress walk about Zion go around her count her Towers consider her ramparts all right now in this place of Mount Zion the first temple is established so the Tabernacle is the first temporary place where the presence of God was kept inside the ark and that was a movable Temple right as God would move the people of Israel they would set up the Tabernacle in the center so that they could have a place where their God would dwell with them a place of overlap on the Earth but that place of overlap was only external it was not internal right but then God says let's he want like let's make a permanent place right so the temple becomes the permanent place but it's still external not internal and there was only one who was able to be in the presence of God at any given time and that was the high priest and so God establishes in the order of Aaron a priesthood and eventually the tribe of Levi becomes the priesthood the people that are set aside by God to tend to the temple to make sacrifices and it says they will have no inheritance they'll have no land because I am their inheritance God is their inheritance right so those who served in the priesthood had a high priest who would make atonement for the sins of the people once a year but they themselves owned no physical land because God himself was going to be their inheritance all right so these are little keys that we need to meditate on as we continue because they will come full circle okay the first temple is established in Jerusalem now it's planned by King David but ended up being built by Solomon because God said that King David had too much blood on his hands but that it would be established by his son so in a thousand BC Solomon builds the first temple and the first temple is the most elaborate one that was constructed um and this Temple took the place of the original um Tabernacle which was followed by David's Tabernacle by the way which sat on this same Hill for 33 years which was is a whole another teaching which I won't get into but Solomon establishes the first brick and brick and mortar the Stone Temple all right now the blueprint of the temple in many ways reflected a garden there's flowers there's palm trees there's fruits you know being carved into pomegranates and all these things and they're being used in this design of a temple right the temple again is this place for God to have a portion of overlapping space among the people until the Fulfillment of Jesus who hangs on a cursed tree to become the embodied tree of life that we must partake of right once again to live forever and so through Union through communion with him through abiding with him we partake of the Tree of Life we'll talk about that in a bit Psalm 92 12-13 says but The Godly will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like Cedars of Lebanon for they are transplanted to the Lord's own house in other words his Temple they will flourish in the courts of our God so God's people are planted in his temp Temple right so it's again this Garden idea that God is taking his people and he's planting them in the place where his presence dwells planting them in his garden his place of delight now there could be no idolatry not only in the temple but in the lives of the people right this is why God established the law So within the temple physically everything had to be exactly as God commanded it to be no not even a foreigner was allowed to come into the in part of the Temple and so the the temple was a Sacred Space it was holy unto God and the more you come into the inner holy of holies the more holy or sacred or set apart those spaces are and in the holy of holies the high priest was only allowed to enter that space once a year and it was so holy that even if the high priest were to die while he was in that space no one was able to go into that space to get him because no one was allowed to enter and so as a precaution they would tie a rope around the ankle of the high priest just in case he died while he was inside ministering so that they could pull him out because to dishonor the Holiness of the presence of God you would drop dead so that's how holy God's presence is that's how other and separate he is and how much he cannot dwell in the presence of sin and so in Exodus 20 2-6 this is going back to the agreement right the Covenant that the people of Israel made with Yahweh he says I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt and out of the land of slavery you shall have no other gods besides me you shall make for yourselves no images in the form of anything in Heaven above or on Earth beneath or in the waters below you shall not bow down to them or worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God punishing the sins of or sorry punishing the children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments so Covenant with Yahweh was very serious it meant complete loyalty to him and the rejection of the Gods of the foreign Nations around them in Joshua 8:30 to 38 this is right before Israel is about to go into the Promised Land under Joshua's leadership and they're right about to enter battle and God says take that or actually Moses had instructed in Deuteronomy 11:29 he says when you're about to enter the land I want you to do this and so Joshua is kind of obeying this 40 years later and he takes the people of God to the valley of sheim now sheim is the place that God promised Abraham that he would give the land in Genesis 12 all right now Sheck has two mountains right on either side and they're kind of like Twin Peak mountains Mount eel and mount gism all right now he commands that the people would stand two different groups right he separated some of the tribes here and separated some here he said stand at the base or gather the people at the base of both of these mountains and I want you to have them shout the blessings and the curses of the Covenant and so they would go back and forth shouting the blessings and the curses of the Covenant of God and vowing to uphold the terms of the Covenant so that they might possess the land so that things might go well with them so that they might be the set aart people that Yahweh has assigned for them to be they had to stay holy right it was about Holiness it was about being his special possession that would not live like the Gods like in the Rebellion to the gods of the Nations but that would live fully set apart fully devoted fully loyal to Covenant with Yahweh so from Mount eel they would yell the curses and from Mount garison they would yell the blessings this was to highlight the distinction of a life in Covenant blessing with Yahweh and the curse of a life in broken relationship with him so obviously we understand that this is the curse of sin the curse of depravity the curse of rebellion but there is a life that comes with blessing when we are in Covenant with Yahweh through Jesus right but Israel was in a constant cycle throughout their history so from this time that they're brought out of Egypt into into now right they've been in a constanty CLE faithfulness idolatry oppression from their enemies they cry out in Repentance as they experience life without protection from Yahweh God rescues them He blesses them again they get comfortable again they enter back into idolatry they're oppressed by their enemies they cry out under the oppression God rescues them so this is a cycle that continues over and over and over and over again in the life of God's people there's hundreds of scriptures I don't even need to quote them there's hundreds maybe thousands that recount this cycle in the people over and over again but whenever you see a Godly King come into leadership what was the first thing they would do they would tear down the shrines and the altars they would deal with the high places they would deal with the idolatry and the false Worship in the land and this was a sign of Covenant right of loyalty to Yahweh so such as Josiah we know he was one of the great reforming Kings who t pour down the high places um all right so the First Act of purification was to cleanse Israel from idolatry it was very very important they had to remove the false altars and the high places all right now we know that Israel did not do great in this constant cycle that they were a part of and though they were warned constantly God would continue to send prophets which they would ignore until things got bad enough the prophet prophets would warn them would warn them would warn them they would ignore them ignore them ignore them and then what the prophet said would happen and they would experience the oppression and the Exile of their enemies and so in 586 BC there was the final um the final destruction of the temple when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and so Babylon took the people of God into this final Exile um over two different waves but the first one being in 580 sorry 597 BC and the second being in 586 when Nebuchadnezzar um took Jerusalem but at that time the first temple was completely destroyed and burnt down and so the people of God were led into slavery and Exile in Babylon all right so they're they remain in Babylon for about 70 years okay so the people of God are dispossessed and as was the common thing in the in the time they would send people from other lands and other nations to kind of they would reposition them in Nations that they didn't understand among people they didn't understand and they would often also leave some of the poorest in order to tend the land and take care of the area but for the most part people were brought into Exile and Babylon all right so after 70 years they are released from Exile when Persia under Cyrus the Great conquers the Babylonian Kingdom all right so this takes place and in 538 BC Cyrus the Great issues an edict or a decree that allows the Jews to return to rebuild the Temple in their Homeland right so now we have people who are in Babylon who have become for all intents and purposes they've become Babylonian for the most part all right so they still have a lot of their Jewish ways and Customs but they have taken on you know the the life of Babylon and it's a city life it's very comfortable for many of them many of them have attained positions in government many of them are you know they have homes they have families life could be pretty comfortable in Babylon versus returning to a ruined City to rebuild it from nothing and leaving everything behind that you've built and constructed and so it was good news for some but for others it they were not interested in leaving Babylon even though the call was to return to their home to return to their land and rebuild it so the Jews ended up leaving in three groups but only about 20% of them returned so that means 80% it's estimated about 80% of them remained in Babylon for 2500 years so literally until 1948 when Israel became a nation again did many of these exiled people returned back to the land so the first one was under zerubabel and zerubabel who was a descendant of David he leads the first return back to rebuild the Temple um about 50,000 people accompany him and that return to rebuild all right now so then in 521 to 516 the temple is rebuilt the second return is under Ezra the priest and this is a return not to rebuild the Temple but to reestablish the law and to reestablish the community the culture of the people of God and this is about 80 years later in 458 BC that Ezra leads another group so he puts out a call imagine so he puts out a call to the people return back with me to reestablish the law to reestablish who we are as a people in our own land guess how many people respond about 1750 about 1750 men is recorded that's not a lot and so the second return had about that many the Third Return under Nehemiah in 445 BC he returns to rebuild the walls and so you see this progression to rebuild the Temple to rebuild the people the culture the community and then to rebuild the wall to fortify the city and so the reestablishment of a fortified people on Mount Zion see God's ultimate desire was for a people who could dwell in his presence with him and live Isaiah 567 says these I will bring to my Holy Mountain and give them joy in the House of Prayer see now Jesus is speaking of his Temple right remember in Mark 11 when Jesus says my house will be called a House of Prayer so Jesus is speaking of his Temple that those will receive Joy right those who are coming will be the ones who receive joy in his Temple that's he's talking about a future people who will have joy in his house of prayer in Isaiah 56 so the church coming not the one that's a dent of robbers but the church that Jesus is prophesying house will be called a house of prayer for all nations that's the time we live in now when Jesus is prophesying about a different people who are coming who will dwell with him Isaiah 2:2 says and it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all the nations shall flow to it let me read Psalm 24 the Earth is the Lord's and everything in it the world and all who live in it for he founded it on the Seas and established it on the waters all right you see that reference again to Genesis who may Ascend the mountain of the Lord so what mountain is he talking about right he just referenced the beginning so who may stand in his holy Place those who have clean hands and a pure heart who do not trust in an idol or swear by a false god they will receive blessing from the Lord and Vindication from God their savior such is the generation of those who seek Him who seek your face God of Jacob lift up your heads you Gates be lifted up you ancient doors that the king of glory may come in who is this king of glory the lord strong and mighty the Lord Mighty in battle lift up your heads you Gates lift them up you ancient doors that the king of glory may come in who is he this king of glory the lord Almighty he is the king of glory so he's wanting a people who will come up with him who will live with him humanity and God's presence dwelling together all right so we have this period of time between Malachi and Matthew it's called the intertestamental period it's not only this about 380 years that the people are you know reestablished in Jerusalem reestablished with the walls rebuilt but then you have an additional you know 50 60 years that's added on to that which makes the intertestamental period which is this period of time where we have not we don't have any um scripture from that time so there is writing from that time and in some um Traditions people do include some of that writing but it's essentially called this intertestamental period where there were no prophets that um you know were set with the word of the Lord so it doesn't mean that nothing prophetic happened you know the macbes were across this time we have um the heniz of the region during this time um you know and we have the cleansing of the temple and some and Hanukkah you know is established because the oil doesn't run out so there there's different you know occurrences that take place during this time that are prophetic in nature but there were no prophets so there's a people reestablished in the land but yet there's no voice of God in the land and so there's a longing and a looking for a messiah and in 63 BC Jerusalem is actually conquered by Rome all right but that's why we see when Jesus you know by the time we get into Matthew and we have the time of Jesus um Israel is a client state of Babylon or sorry of Rome um meaning that you know they can keep their own culture their own customs and religion to some extent right they're still ruled by Rome but they have a puppet King in place which ultimately becomes Herod I believe he's been in place in like 40 BC and so Jesus comes into the scene right as the people of God are waiting for someone to rescue them out of captivity again because now they've become captives at home so they had this period of time where they were free from Babylon but now Rome has come as a new power and has taken over their freedom again all right so there was always an oppressor that would come as the people were in that cycle of idolatry um all right let's talk about Jesus all right Jesus is the new Adam all right we talked in the beginning of this series about Adam and Eve right that first Adam born into a a a place of perfection the place of delight Eden he is a he resembles the overlap right between the heavens and the Earth this place where things where God and and human you know Earthly reality can dwell together now Jesus reverses the failure of Adam and Eve so just as Adam sinned and fell in the garden and came under Satan's authority Jesus then recovers and redeems those very three things Pride Independence and lust that we see with Adam and Eve in Matthew 41-11 when Jesus goes into the Wilderness to be tempted by Satan he then conquers all three of these tests in order to redeem us from the curse that we came under right so Jesus ends up using both titles in his ministry the Son of God and the son of man or the son of Adam right and Jesus were able to become the sons of God once again right 2 Corinthians 5:15 to 21 says and he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again so then from now on WE regard no one from from a worldly point of view though we once regarded Christ in this way we do so no longer therefore if anyone is in Christ the new creation has come the old has gone the new is here all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ not counting people's sins against them and he has committed to us the message of reconciliation we are therefore Christ ambassadors as though God was making his appeal through us we implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God all right we see several defining moments for Jesus in a garden you have the Garden of Gethsemane and this is where Jesus accepts the will of God it talks about he was sweating blood under the pressure of accepting his calling accepting the suffering Ing and he accepts the will of God there but he's also betrayed by Judas all right then he's led up to what we understand as Mount Mariah the same place where on the mountain it will be provided right the sacrifice will be provided he is Led there as that sacrifice the lamb that God said he would provide and he absorbs the curse on a tree right he he he absorbs a curse on a cursed tree and he becomes a tree of life for us right eat my flesh drink my blood the communion that we receive is the partaking right it's the act of partaking of him partaking of the tree of life that we might live forever we have the garden tomb he's laid in a tomb in a garden so when he is Resurrected the first place that he steps into is a garden again and it's from that place that the resurrected savior reemerges into the world right and then we have the new Eden where of course Jesus is in revelation 22 but in Christ we're invited into a place that is unanimous with a person see here's where we're going to start to see again that merging of the Divine line with the natural becoming one again so even in Ephesians 2:10 when Paul talks about we are seated with Christ in Heavenly places he says are you are right now not one day you'll be seated but right now you're seated how because we are in him where he is so he is seated with God in the third heaven so in the the place where God dwells he's seated there and we're seated there in him so he himself is a place here's what I'm wanting us to catch out of this right now he himself is a place of delight he himself is a tree that we must eat from he himself is the recovery of the Divine overlap where we find the place of rest where we find fruitful production right let's look at John 15 and all the imagery that Jesus uses of the garden to speak about himself he says I am the True Vine and my father is the gardener he cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful you are already clean because of the word I've spoken to you remain in me in me because he's a place as I also remain in you Union no Branch can bear fruit by itself it must remain in the vine neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me I am the vine you are the branches if you remain in me and I in you you will bear much fruit apart from me you can do nothing if you do not remain in me you are like a branch that is thrown away and Withers such branches are picked up thrown into the fire and burned if you remain in me and my words remain in you ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you this is to my father's Glory that you bear much fruit showing yourselves to be my disciples then he talks about remain in my love you know I told you this that my joy may be complete in you and that your joy may be complete remember what Jesus said those will have joy in my house of prayer so who gets the joy in the House of Prayer those who remain in him those who find themselves in a new place right the realm of Heaven is housed in him remember the Mountain the place of divine overlap the heavens are in him that realm It's contained he is the logos the creative force of all things and in him all things are held together so he holds the heavens within himself he is the house of this of all these things right it and it when you when you really like process it it's kind of like wait so he's the house in the heaven it it's almost like too much for our brain right but he is the house of the authority and Dominion of God's rule Jesus is Eden he is the mountain he is the Divine embodiment of the overlap of the Dominion of God and man reunited the new Adam right so we become the new Adam Again by coming into Christ so we Return to Eden by coming into Christ coming into Union with him now Eden returns to the Earth the place of delight begins to expand out from where us we become the new place from which Eden can proceed out from its Dominion in us that produces Dominion around us right Eden returns to the Earth through our partnership with him through our Union with him right in him all things live and move and find their being it's the the Dominion of God is in Christ so where there's an absence of Jesus there is an absence of God's Dominion of God's rule right there's three Mountain encounters that I want us to pay attention to with Moses and Mount Si in Exodus 19 God calls to him from the mountain he reveals himself as a cloud I want us to see a pattern he reveals himself as the cloud okay you can turn there in your own time Exodus 19 he reveals himself in a cloud he commissions Moses this is what you're to say to the people um you he basically says you'll be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation he establishes the fear of the Lord in that place he reveals the law instructions for the temple sends Moses back down there's some some key things that I've highlighted obviously I've skipped a lot go back and read it but the key theme in this encounter or these series of encounters that Moses has with God on Mount Si is listen to the law listen to the law I'm establishing rules for you I'm establishing law for you listen to it okay now we have a second Mountain encounter Jesus Takes Peter James and John up a mountain in Matthew 17 1-9 he takes them to the top of the mountain and he reveals there's a revelation of his identity as the Son of God right so he is transfigured Before Their Eyes he begins to shine like the sun um he is revealed as light so Moses and Elijah appear and talk with them and what do they represent think about it we'll talk about it in a minute and God is speaking again in front of those who need to Bear witness just like the Israelites right so he's speaking again the cloud covers them and a voice speaks from the cloud and it's the same as the cloud of the affirmation of identity at baptism the in the introduction of the fear of the Lord again right it says the disciples were terrified he reveals Jesus and says listen to him listen to him so before it was listen to it the law now it's listen to him my son and before you have the law and the prophets right so Isa or sorry Elijah and Moses appear it says and they stand with Jesus on the top of this mountain now why why are they there okay Moses was the shadow of Jesus the one who receive the law right the Mosaic law Elijah is the one who is resembling the prophets so Moses and Elijah would be the prophetic sign that the one who was promised had come right when the angel Gabriel is speaking to Zachariah regarding John the Baptist in Luke 1:17 he says and he will go on speaking of the Messiah and he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord all right now Jesus himself is the true thing while the law was a mirror it was a supervisor a guardian in Ephesians 3:24 a shadow of the things coming Hebrews 10:1 a copy of true things Hebrews 9:27 right so Jesus himself embodied the law and the prophets right he said that he was going to fulfill both the law and the prophets said I did not come to demolish or to get rid of the law and the prophets I came to fulfill I came as the Fulfillment of the law and the prophets so Moses and Elijah were the prophetic sign that the one who was promised had arrived Peter James and John would have known this promise concerning the Messiah and this time Jesus says you know don't be afraid get up so he there's an invitation to come closer out of that place of Terror and fear right he invites them close so because of relationship they're no longer afraid to approach right in verse eight it says they saw no one but Jesus when they looked up so it went from listen to the law listen to it the thing outside of you to listen to him the one you're in relationship with and now we have a third Mountain encounter post Resurrection so both of these Mountain encounters are prior to the resurrection then we have in Matthew 28 the Great Commission it says then the 11 disciples this is verse 16 then the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go when they saw him they worshiped but some doubted then Jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me therefore go and make disciples of all Nations baptizing them in the name of the father of the son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you and surely I am with you to the very end of the age so it goes from listen to it the law listen to him the one who you are connected to the one you're in relationship to to the third Mountain join with him so it's not just listen to him it's join with him so now we are at a place where we can be recovered as Sons so not only are we in relationship with him we can listen to his voice but now we can join with him in his mission right what is the Great Commission it's the reaffirmation of the Dominion mandate from Genesis when God tells Adam and Eve be fruitful multiply fill the Earth and subdue it he's giving them a command come out from this Eden Place as you grow and take Dominion take the land right it's the same thing that he says to the Israelites as you grow and as you're able to Steward you will take the you know summarize you'll take the the land that I've promised to you place by place as you expand outward now he's saying to his people to his disciple and and you know an extension of that to the body of Christ to the church he's saying out from this place right from Jerusalem Samaria to the ends of the Earth out from this place as my people you will expand as you grow take this gospel message to the ends of the Earth it's a reestablishment of dominion of establishing a kingdom that we now are in Union with him and have a recovery of our assignment right this is an invitation to be an Apostolic people again so now as Jesus ascends right it says he ascends into heaven from that mountain that he leaves us with an assignment on the earth and so then we'll get into part three