Ezekiel Part 10

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Ezekiel Part 11

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During the fellowship time, several of you online requested that we also name your loved ones who died in the faith and you weren't able to get it to us before the service today.

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So we have four more names that we would like to recognize then. And so let's pray.

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Almighty God, Father of mercies and giver of all comfort, deal graciously with all those who mourn, casting every care on you, that they may know the consolation of your love through Jesus Christ, your

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Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. In joyful expectation of the resurrection to eternal life, we remember before the

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Lord our departed family and friends who have gone before us in faith and all those who are in our hearts and our minds this day.

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Today we also remember Nolan Allen. Not able to toll my bell.

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Yeah, let's try this. No, it'll echo. Nina Blatt, Janet Carlson, and Margarita Leche.

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There we go. One final prayer. Almighty God, we remember with thanksgiving those who've loved and served you in your church on earth and who now rest from their labors.

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Keep us in the fellowship with all of your saints and bring us at last to the joy of your heavenly kingdom. Through Jesus Christ, your

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Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Okay.

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We are going to continue our walk through the book of Ezekiel. We're going to back up just a little.

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And we noted last week that as we've gotten to chapter 9 that the unfortunate thing about the

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English translation, the ESV, is that they do not rightly translate it, which, of course, I lamented that fact last week.

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And when God commands Ezekiel to pass through and put up Mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over the abominations that are committed in it, the

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Hebrew legitimately says putetav, putetau, which is a Hebrew letter. And back in the days of Ezekiel, that Hebrew letter would have looked exactly like a cross.

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And so you cannot read this without that happening.

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Hang on a second here. Daniel Johnson is requesting remote control of your screen. No. No. No.

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We're going to change my security settings here. No, I don't even have that set up as something.

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Decline, decline, decline, decline. Oh, this is annoying.

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Huh. So would there have been early, early transcripts of the Scripture that would have had that with the cross in it?

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Well, we just know that the Hebrew of the time would have, that would have been, that's the tav, that would have been a cross.

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Do we have any extant manuscripts from Ezekiel's time? No. That would actually be quite extraordinary.

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And so the Dead Sea Scrolls, they come after Ezekiel, not before or during.

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All right. Let's see here. I want to see something here. All right.

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Let's then work our way back through this text and see what we can sort out here.

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It says, Then he cried in all my ears with a loud voice. This is chapter 9. Bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.

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And behold, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand.

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And with them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing -case at his waist. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

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Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested. And we're going to note here, this is the beginning of the glory of God departing from the temple, being driven out, if you would, by their impenitent idolatry and the abominations that are taking place.

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So God has made it clear he's going to act in judgment, that he's going to spare those who trust and believe in him.

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And this is evidenced then by the fact that they are groaning and sighing over the abominations that are happening, that are committed inside of the temple.

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Do you ever feel like you groan and sigh when you look at the abominations that are taking place in so many churches today?

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Do you remember the Sparkle Creed when it made the rounds just a few months ago on social media?

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What an abomination that thing is. And so many of the things that are occurring in places that call themselves

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Christian, they aren't Christian at all. They're actually quite anti -Christian. And so do you lament and mourn the state of affairs within the

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Christian church, within your own soul even? That's kind of the idea here. Then God is going to have them marked.

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So now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub. And the Lord said to him, pass through the city, through Jerusalem, put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.

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And to the others, he said, in my hearing, pass through the city after him and strike. Your eye shall not spare.

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You shall show no pity. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary so that they began with the elders who were before the house.

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These were the 70 elders who were engaging in all kinds of idolatry, right, beginning with them.

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They go first. And then he said to them, defile the house, fill the courts with the slain, go out.

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So they went out and struck in the city. And while they were striking and I was left alone,

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I fell upon my face and I cried, ah, Lord God, will you destroy all the remnant of Israel in the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?

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And then he said to me, the guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood and the city full of injustice.

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For they say, Yahweh has forsaken the land and Yahweh does not see.

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As for me, my eye will not spare nor will I have pity. I will bring their deeds upon their heads.

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And behold, the man clothed in linen with the writing case at his waist brought back words saying,

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I have done as you have commanded me. So you'll note that when God acts in judgment like this in the

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Old Testament, each and every time God acts in this way, it is a foretaste of the day of judgment.

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You'll note that when Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, the only people who are spared are

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Christians. They are, the dead in Christ rise first, we join them in the air, and the rest of humanity gets to be destroyed, outright killed in God's wrath.

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This is why next week's texts are really, really sober reminders of God's wrath.

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Amos 5, our Old Testament reading for next week, woe to you who desire the way of Yahweh.

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Why would you have the day of Yahweh? It is darkness, it is not light, as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall and a serpent bit him.

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It is not the day of Yahweh, darkness and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it. And so you get the idea that when

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God really acts in judgment, you don't have to worry about the media complaining about it.

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There will be no propaganda from Hamas or any groups.

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CNN will be no more. Same with Fox News and all the newspapers.

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And nobody will be screeching about it on Twitter. That will be the last thing that comes to their mind because the unrighteous will also die on that day.

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It's the end of the world, literally. And I don't care what REM says, nobody's going to say,

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I feel fine. It's not going to be like that meme with that dog sitting in hell saying, this is okay.

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It's going to be none of that. Are you using the Brave browser?

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No. I'm not brave enough for the Brave browser. We'll continue on here.

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So now the glory of Yahweh is going to leave the temple. And we're going to see that God is legitimately being driven out because of their impendence and idolatry.

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He says, I'm done, no more. And you're going to notice something. God has been for a long time up to this point patient, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, pardoning iniquity, seeking their repentance so that he can pardon them.

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You'll note that even in the days of Noah, it's not like God said, oh, I lamented,

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I made man on the earth, forget it, let's just kill him now. That's not what happened.

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Instead, how long did Noah preach? Noah was a preacher of righteousness. How long, while he was building the ark, did he also preach and call people to repentance?

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We learn from 2 Peter, he did that for what, 100, 120 years? So you'll note that in our day, as the darkness continues to increase and the light becomes less easy to find, that God at this point is still acting in mercy towards us.

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But there is a day coming when this mercy has run its course. Today is the day of salvation, today is the day of God's grace, but you cannot guarantee that tomorrow will be.

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And people who seem to think that, you know, well, if I go skydiving and my parachute doesn't open, well then

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I'll repent and then I'll become a Christian. You don't know if you're gonna have that ability, right? You just legitimately don't.

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And people oftentimes, really with hubris, think that way. Well, I'll become a Christian when

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I'm on my deathbed. You're not even guaranteed that. Okay? I think the death of Matthew Perry might serve as a warning to some.

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The guy was a year younger than I am. He was born in 69, I was born in 68. And so he passed suddenly in his jacuzzi.

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What a terrible place to go to be turned into a soup. That's not the right way to go, but the thing is that you just don't know.

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My wife's aunt, she passed away last Saturday, or was it the Saturday before? And she was in her bathroom getting ready in the morning and she just collapsed and died in her own bathroom.

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You don't know how quickly your death is going to come. And so that being the case, today is the day of salvation.

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Today is the day of God's mercy. Today is the day that he will hear you and forgive you and pardon you.

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You don't know what tomorrow brings. So now the glory's gonna leave the temple, which is a bad thing altogether, because this means

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God's about to execute judgment on the city of Jerusalem and legitimately bring about the destruction that he promised.

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So then I look, behold, on the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim. There appeared above them something like a sapphire, an appearance like a throne.

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And he said to the man clothed in linen, Go in among the whirling wheels underneath the cherubim.

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Fill your hands with burning coals from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city.

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And he went in before my eyes. Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the house.

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So this is invoking that very first vision that we have in the opening chapter of Ezekiel, that throne of God with the cherubim, each of them with four different faces and the wheels and things like this.

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Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the house and when the man went in and a cloud filled the inner court and the glory of Yahweh went up from the cherub to the threshold of the house and the house was filled with a cloud and the court was filled with the brightness of the glory of Yahweh.

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And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard as far as the outer court, like the voice of God Almighty when he speaks.

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And when he commanded the man clothed in linen take fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim, he went in and stood beside a wheel and a cherub stretched out his hand from between the cherubim to the fire that was between the cherubim and took some of it and put it on the hands of the man clothed in linen who took it and went out.

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The cherubim appeared to have the form of a human hand under their wings. And I looked and behold there were four wheels beside the cherubim, one beside each cherub and the appearance of the wheels was like sparkling beryl and as for their appearance, the four had the same likeness as if a wheel were within a wheel.

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And we'll note these are kind of those casters, you know, the kind of wheels that we talked about, how the throne is able to kind of move without changing direction, kind of go this way and that way.

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And as for their appearance, the four had the same likeness as a wheel within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went, but in whatever direction the front wheel faced, the others followed without turning as they went.

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Their whole body, their rims and their spokes and their wings and the wheels were full of eyes all around, the wheels that the four of them had.

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As for the wheels, they were called, in my hearing, the whirling wheels. And every one had four faces.

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The first face was the face of a cherub, the second the face of a human face, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.

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And the cherubim mounted up. These were the living creatures that I saw by the

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Chabar Canal. And when the cherubim went, the wheels went beside them.

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And when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the wheels did not turn from beside them.

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When they stood up, these stood still. When they mounted up, these mounted up with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in them.

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I know this is a little bit of a confusing picture, but basically the idea here is that we have liftoff.

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Okay, this thing is starting to take off. And then you'll note, like, if you have an office chair in your house or if you work in an office, you'll note you're able to take your chair and you can pull that thing in any direction and the seat always faces the same direction.

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That's the same idea with these wheels, is that they're designed in such a way that the throne of Christ is able to move without the throne turning.

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That they don't have to change direction. Or wheels are like caster wheels like at the bottom of an office chair, and so he's able to move up.

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And now the thing is lifting up altogether. It's, you know, SpaceX would be jealous at this point.

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You know. Sorry. I'm just a little punchy, just a little punchy.

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So the glory of Yahweh went out from the threshold of the house and then stood over the cherubim.

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And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth before my eyes as they went out with the wheels beside them.

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And they stood at the entrance of the east gate of the house of Yahweh and the glory of the

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God of Israel was over them. These were the living creatures that I saw underneath the

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God of Israel by the Chebar canal and I knew that they were the cherubim.

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Each had four faces, each had four wings and underneath their wings the likeness of human hands. And as for the likeness of their faces, they were the same faces whose appearance

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I had seen by the Chebar canal. Each one of them went straight forward.

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Now, by way of contrast, so here we see the glory of Yahweh lifting up off the temple and he's gone.

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I'm out of here. God is not going to continue to have his glory in a place where such abominable practices are taking place.

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But think through your history of Israel. What's the opposite of this? What would be the opposite when the glory of the

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Lord came and rested on the temple? You guys remember that story? No?

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Okay. Well, I think I can fix that. Okay. So let's see here.

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First Kings. David in his old age. Adonijah sets himself up as king.

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No, no, no, that's not what we want. Give me a second here. I want to get...

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Ah, here we go. Alright, so the ark brought into the temple. We got that part. The Lord appears to Solomon, the queen of Sheba.

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That's quite an interesting story. Solomon turns to Yahweh. Okay. Alright, let's see here.

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I think it might actually be in the Chronicles. Hold on a second here. Ah, here we go.

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Here it is. Okay. So let me read a portion of 2

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Chronicles. In 2 Chronicles, in the beginning portion of it, we have the building of Solomon's temple.

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This is the temple at the time of Ezekiel, and it's about to be destroyed. And what we're going to read stands in direct contradistinction to what we just read.

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So here's what it says at 2 Chronicles 5. That's all the work that Solomon did for the house of Yahweh was finished.

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Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated and stored the silver, the gold, and all the vessels in the treasuries of the house of God.

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So then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers' houses of the people of Israel in Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the covenant of Yahweh out of the city of David, which is

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Zion. And all the men of Israel assembled before the king at the feast that is in the seventh month.

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Now a little bit of a note here. As I'm reading this, there is this detail that's just thrown in here, and if you're reading it quick, it just goes right over your head.

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But here's the detail. You don't want this to go away. To bring up the ark of the covenant of Yahweh out of the city of David, which is what?

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Zion. The city of David is Zion. If you want to talk about Mount Zion, where was the ark of the covenant while the temple was being built?

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Where was it? Huh? Yeah. But where did that happen to be?

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There was a very specific place where that was. And the very specific place is really kind of adjacent to where the temple is being built, and that's on the threshing floor.

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If you remember when David had wanted to do a census, God was very displeased with that, and so God sent a destroying angel to destroy a large number of the people of Israel, and what happened is that the angel got to the threshing floor.

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I forget the name of the fellow whose threshing floor it was. And there he stopped because it says in the text that Yahweh saw.

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It's a fascinating account. Maybe I should just kind of help out a little bit here. We have to go back even farther, and then we'll come back to here, and then we'll go forward.

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I'm looking at you guys, and you're all looking at me like, I don't know. There is some

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AI program out there that will figure out the meta. I tried. It's impossible.

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I took the transcript one time. Too many.

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Here's our text to start with. We're going back a little bit farther. I want this to really kind of sink in, and then we'll go forward.

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We're off on a bunny trail, and this is a bunny trail within a bunny trail. We talked about the wheel within a wheel, so hey, a bunny trail within a bunny trail, that's a thing.

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In Genesis 22, here's our text. After these things, God tested

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Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am. He said, Take your son, your only son,

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Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah to offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which

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I shall tell you. Now, we all note here, wait a second, Abraham had another son, right?

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Ishmael. When God is using the phrase your only son, he's using a word that's akin to the word begotten.

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When we talk about Christ being the only begotten son of God, we're saying he's one of a kind. So he's not saying that Isaac is the only son of Abraham, that would actually be kind of weird for God to say that, but that Isaac is kind of a one of a kind son.

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He's the son of promise. So take your son, your only begotten son, maybe, your unique son,

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Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which

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I shall tell you. So Abraham rose in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son

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Isaac, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of God, which

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God told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

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And then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

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And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife.

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So they went, both of them, together. So where are they going? They're going to Mount Moriah. Mount Moriah is the place where the temple was built.

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So the Kidron Valley, which separates the Mount of Olives from the

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Temple Mount, notice they call it the Temple Mount, that's Mount Moriah. And that mount continues up.

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The slopes of it continue to ascend within the city of Jerusalem to the point where Christ was actually crucified just outside the city walls on the slopes of Mount Moriah.

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Keep this in mind. So what we're looking at in this account here is legitimately, this is a dress rehearsal for the crucifixion of Christ.

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Okay, so you know, he's called to sacrifice his son, his only son, his unique son.

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But Jesus is the only begotten son of God. So the idea here is Isaac is a stand -in for Christ in the types and shadows.

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He's carrying the wood for him to be sacrificed on. Does that sound familiar?

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I know a guy who carried the wood for his own sacrifice. His name is Jesus. He carried his cross, at least for a while before he stumbled under the load because he'd been beaten so bad.

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But the idea here is that this is all super significant because of the place. And so this idea, when we talk about Zion or Mount Zion, this is legitimately referring to Mount Moriah.

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That's really where we're heading with this. So Abraham took the wood, the burnt offering, laid it on Isaac, laid on it, laid it on Isaac, his son.

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He took the hand of the fire and the knife. They went, both of them together. Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father.

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He said, here I am, my son. He said, behold, the fire and the wood. Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

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Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. No truer words were ever spoken.

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So they went, both of them together. And when they came to the place which God had told them, Abraham built the altar there, laid the wood in order, bound

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Isaac, his son, laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

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Note, Isaac is on top of the wood. How do you get a young man to comply with this? I do not know.

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It doesn't explain. But the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven, said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here

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I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now

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I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

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And Abraham lifted up his eyes and look, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns.

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Thickets are full of thorns, right? So you have a ram caught with thorns.

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That's an important thing too. This points to Jesus' crown of thorns and the types and shadows.

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And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. Oh look, a substitutionary sacrifice.

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So Abraham called the name of that place and here's where, hmm,

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Yahweh will provide. Note, there's a note, a footnote in the ESV.

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Thank God they gave it a note. Yahweh will see, okay? Because legitimately it says

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Yahweh, Yihreh, from Ra 'ah, the verb to see.

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So Yahweh will see. Note what it says.

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And the ESV even notes that. Look at footnote two, or will see. The name of that place,

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Yahweh will see, Yahweh Yihreh, as it is said to this day, on the

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Mount of Yahweh it shall be provided. No, on the

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Mount of Yahweh he will see or it will be seen. Now, this is why pastors must study the original languages.

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They have to, otherwise they miss vital bits of information. So when we fast forward then, let me do a census.

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All right, hang on a second here. Not numbers. In the account in 2

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Chronicles, no, no, no, no, hang on a second here. David, hang on a second here.

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Maybe it's at the end of 1 Chronicles. Hang on a second, I think it is. Let me do this. 1 Chronicles, we're gonna go toward the end here.

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David's charge to Israel, offerings to the temple, military divisions, gatekeepers, musicians.

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Hang on a second here. Just gotta find David's census. Here it is. 1

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Chronicles 21. All right, we're still on the bunny trail within the bunny trail. We'll get back to bunny trail level here in a second here.

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All right, second bit of information. So Satan stood against Israel and incited

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David to number Israel. You're not permitted to do this without paying a particular amount of money for each person you count.

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Okay? If there's to be a census, according to the Mosaic Covenant, you have to pay for each soul that you count.

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David didn't do this. He just wanted the number, all right? So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, go number

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Israel from Bathsheba to Dan and bring me a report that I may know their number. Joab said, may

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Yahweh add to his people a hundred times as many as they are. Are they not, my

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Lord the King, all of them my Lord's servants? Why then should my

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Lord require this? Why should it be a cause of guilt for Israel? But the King's word prevailed against Joab, so Joab departed and went throughout all of Israel and came back to Jerusalem.

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And Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to David. In all of Israel, there were 1 ,100 ,000 men.

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That's not a real number. When we do our census here in the

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States every 10 years, and you're required to do this, when we do our census every 10 years, the numbers never round up like this.

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So Joab basically went and did a half -baked job because this was not a request that he thought was justified or right or moral or just.

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So there were 1 ,100 ,000 men who drew the sword, and in Judah, 470 ,000 who drew the sword.

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But he did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering for the King's commandment was abhorrent to Joab. But God was displeased with this thing, and he struck

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Israel. David said to God, I have sinned greatly in that I have done this thing, but now please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.

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And Yahweh spoke to Gad, David's seer, saying, Go and say to David, Thus says Yahweh, Three things

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I offer you. Choose one of them that I may do it to you. So Gad came to David and said to him,

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Thus says Yahweh, Choose what you will, either three years of famine, three months of devastation by your foes while the sword of your enemies overtakes you, or else three days of the sword of Yahweh, pestilence on the land with the angel of Yahweh, that's

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Jesus, destroying throughout all of the territory of Israel. Now decide what answer

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I shall return to him who sent me. David said to Gad, I am in great distress. Let me fall into the hand of Yahweh, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.

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So David has door number one, door number two, and door number three, and door number three is

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Yahweh acting, but he knows something about Yahweh. There's a great mercy with him.

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So he trusts Yahweh, even with potentially his own destruction. So Yahweh sent a pestilence on Israel and 70 ,000 men of Israel fell, and God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, look what the text says.

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Yahweh saw. Rah -ah. Yahweh saw. Does this sound familiar now?

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Okay. What did he see? Well, he saw. Okay, I know he saw.

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What did he see? Okay, let's keep going. And he relented of the calamity, and he said to the angel who was working destruction, it is enough, now stay your hand.

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And the angel of Yahweh was standing by the threshing floor of Ornon the Jebusite. That's the guy who owns the threshing floor.

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Isn't it fascinating that where the temple is gonna be built on Mount Moriah, there was a threshing floor. That's the place where the wheat and the chaff were separated.

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Hmm. That also becomes the same mount where Christ is crucified. And you'll note at Jesus' crucifixion, the threshing begins.

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On one side of him, you have a fellow who does not believe in Jesus and who mocks him, and another fellow who trusts in Jesus and says,

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Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. At Jesus, the site where Jesus was crucified was indeed a threshing floor, but not of the physical kind of the spiritual.

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And it continues to be to this day. So David lifted up his eyes, he saw the angel of Yahweh standing between earth and heaven in his hand.

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He had drawn swords, stretched over Jerusalem. David said to the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.

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And this had to be an awesome sight. David said to God, was it not I who gave a command to number the people?

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It is I who have sinned and done great evil. But these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand,

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O Yahweh my God, be against me and against my father's house, but do not let the plague be on your people.

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Now the angel of Yahweh had commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up and raise an altar to Yahweh on the threshing floor of Ornon the

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Jebusite. So David went up at Gad's word, which he had spoken in the name of Yahweh.

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Now Ornon was threshing wheat. He turned and saw the angel and his four sons who were with him.

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They hid themselves. As David came to Ornon, Ornon looked and saw David and went out from the threshing floor and paid homage to David with his face to the ground.

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And David said to Ornon, give me the site of the threshing floor that I may build on it an altar to Yahweh.

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Give it to me at its full price that the plague may be averted from the people. So Ornon said to David, take it and let my

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Lord the King do whatever seems good to him. See, I give the oxen for the burnt offerings and the threshing sledges for the wood and the wheat for the grain offering.

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I give it all. But King David said to Ornon, no, but I will buy them for full price.

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I will not take for Yahweh what is yours nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing.

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So David paid Ornon 600 shekels of gold by weight for the site and David built there an altar to Yahweh and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings and called on Yahweh.

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And Yahweh answered him with fire from heaven upon the altar of burnt offering. And Yahweh commanded the angel and he put his sword back into its sheath.

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That's a picture of what happens to all of us. So the sword of the

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Lord stands over all of us in our wickedness and because of Christ's sacrifice,

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God's sword is sheathed. So it's a beautiful picture. So the idea then here is that this then is a critical place and all of this takes place on Mount Moriah.

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This then becomes a place where the temple is built and this is where Mount Zion is.

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Mount Zion is Mount Moriah, the same mountain where the temple is, the same mountain where Christ was crucified.

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Let me see if I can find this in the web browser real quick. If I were to go to Google and I'm gonna, what do

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I wanna see? I wanna see photo of the church of the

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Holy Sepulcher. Here we go. All right, let's see what Google can give me here.

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All right, let's see here. I want images of the church of the Holy Sepulcher. Now, the church of the

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Holy Sepulcher, if you were to travel to Jerusalem, and I still haven't done that yet, so I always travel there using other people's vacation photos because it's a lot cheaper.

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And a little safer at the moment, I'm just saying. Any plans to visit Israel are definitely on the back burner at the moment.

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We'll wait until peace returns, if it ever does, right? But the church of the Holy Sepulcher is on the slopes of Mount Moriah, and there are two fundamental important sites that are underneath this building, underneath the roof of this building.

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One is the place where Christ was buried. That's on one end of it. On the other end of it is the place where Christ was crucified.

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And what's interesting is that if you know the history of this place, so what happens is that the

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Christians, after Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, this becomes a pilgrimage site.

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This becomes a site that Christians visit from around the world. And the Roman Empire, when it outlawed

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Christianity, didn't want that occurring anymore, so one of the Roman emperors actually built a temple to Jupiter over it.

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But the Christians remembered where the site was, and they knew why that temple had been built there, and basically the temple of Jupiter was built to supersede that place as a place for the king of kings and lord of lords.

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And so when Constantine became emperor, his mother visited the

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Holy Land and wanted to know where Christ's death and tomb were, and the

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Christians said, it's here. It was buried by a Roman emperor underneath this temple, and so she had that temple to Jupiter raised, and then that became the site where now the

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Church of the Holy Sepulchre sits, but Christians have always known that this is the place. And so if I were to look, let me do another quick search here.

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Photos of the temple mount. See if I can find one that you can kind of see the perspective.

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Temple mount. All right. Let's see if that's...

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No, I don't think that's the one. So this is from... Notice where we're...

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I want you to see this. This is a photograph facing the

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Dome of the Rock, which is where the temple used to be built, where it used to be. The temple was very close to this.

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It was on the slab, the same slab where the Dome of the Rock is. In the background here, you can see the Mount of Olives.

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That's the Mount of Olives, and down below it is the... Oh, what is the name of that valley?

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I just said it a minute ago. Kidron Valley. The Kidron Valley down there. But note here, this is a photograph from up in the city looking down.

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So you can see from here, whoever took this photograph is looking downhill.

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So this photograph is taken actually near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. So you can see the slope continues up.

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Let's see if I can catch it from this view. No, that's still not going to quite do it. Hang on a second here.

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There was a photograph I used a couple years ago in this regard, which was really kind of neat.

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Because if you kind of look from one end, you can actually see...

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Here you can see it. Note the slope continues up. And let me see if I can just...

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Temple Mount, Church of the Holy Sep...

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Hang on, I spelled it wrong, but see if Google will fix it. All right, hang on a second here. Yeah, here we go.

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This is the one. Boy, is that a terrible picture. There, it came into view. Temple Mount.

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Slope of Mount Moriah continues up. Church of the Holy Sepulcher right here. This is where Christ is crucified.

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So you can see how Mount Moriah continues up. So I legitimately think that based on what we're seeing here,

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Christ sees he's the angel of the Lord. He sees the place of his crucifixion. He sees the...

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And he... I said on the mountain of Yahweh, he will see.

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He saw. And this is what stayed his hand. This is what stopped the plague and all this kind of stuff.

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All of this has ramifications regarding not only the temple itself, but also then the crucifixion of Christ, which is on the same mountain.

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So keep this in mind. Mount Zion is an important feature. So coming back then, we're going to go back up to the first level bunny trail.

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Okay, because we've got the second one kind of resolved. You can kind of see how this plays into it. So the first level bunny trail then was here in 2

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Chronicles 5. So Solomon and the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers' houses of the people of Israel, introduced them to bring up the

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Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh out of the city of David, which is Zion. And all the men of Israel assembled before the king at the feast, that is in the seventh month.

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And all the elders of Israel came, and the Levites took up the Ark. And they brought up the Ark, the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent.

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The Levitical priests brought them up. And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel who had assembled before him were before the

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Ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered.

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Then the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh to its place in the inner sanctuary of the house in the most holy place underneath the wings of the cherubim.

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The cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the Ark so that the cherubim made a covering above the

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Ark and its poles. And the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place before the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from the outside.

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And they are there to this day. At least that was the time when this was written. There was nothing in the Ark except for the two tablets that Moses had put there at Horeb where Yahweh made a covenant with the people of Israel.

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And when they came out of Egypt, and when the priests came out of the holy place, for the priests who were present had consecrated themselves without regard to their divisions.

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Now, you get the idea here. So Solomon is then going to bless the place, and he's going to give a wonderful prayer, but because of my limitations on time,

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I cannot read that entire prayer at all. So I'm going to fast forward to the bit that's kind of the part that stands in juxtaposition that we are looking at here.

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I have this highlighted, though. Listen to it. This is part of Solomon's prayer dedication. If they sin against you, for there is no one who does not sin, and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy so that they are carried away captive to a land far or near, yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity, saying,

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We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly, if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity to which they were carried captive and pray toward their land which you gave their fathers, the city that you have chosen and the house that I have built for your name, then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their pleas and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you.

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Isn't that interesting? A prophetic aspect, then, of this prayer, which actually anticipates what's taking place in the time of Ezekiel, in the time of Jeremiah.

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And so, now, my God, let your eyes be open and your ears attentive to their prayer, and then here's what happens.

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As soon as Solomon had finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of Yahweh filled the temple.

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And the priests could not enter the house of Yahweh because the glory of Yahweh filled Yahweh's house.

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When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of Yahweh on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to Yahweh, saying,

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For he is good, his steadfast love endures forever. This was not a manifestation of glitter and chicken feathers.

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This was a legitimate manifestation of the glory of God, and all the people present at the dedication of Solomon's temple were there to see it.

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And when God's glory left at the time of Ezekiel, Ezekiel's the only one who can see it.

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Everyone else just got put to the sword. So, something to keep in mind. But that's as far as I can get today.

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My apologies. I've got to skedaddle and head back, head over to Emmanuel. All right, peace to you, brothers and sisters.