Mountain of God | Will Waldron | Week 10

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us [email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you. [00:00:37] Speaker B: All right guys, we are ready to begin for our last last night in the Mountain Bible class. I gotta tell you guys, I have, I have thoroughly enjoyed this class. I appreciate Yalls participation and your comments and bearing with me when I say I would like your comments. And then I just ramble for 45 minutes because that's just how I teach. A lot of times my wife, you can just the look says it all. So tonight, in recognition that we have gone about 100 miles an hour and I've pelted you with like little readings to do and podcasts to listen to and all that stuff all semester, we're just gonna slow down and I am eager to hear your thoughts to tonight. If you don't like speaking out loud in a Bible class. This is an interactive polling software that I'm using so you can sign in with the QR code and you can submit your thoughts or answers or responses via your devices instead of answering them out loud. However, I still welcome the traditional dialogue in the class. So whichever you prefer, whatever medium you like. But I've got like about seven discussion questions that I'm going to throw onto the board here. Some of them are just I'm eager to hear your thoughts and some of them are more into the practical element of how do we live this out in Madison, Alabama today? So we'll begin with some of the discussion questions here. We might skip some based on time because it's I've been trying all semester to work in all quarter to work in the all of the songs that mention mountains like the Mountains Surround Jerusalem and We Shall Assemble and all of those things. So I'd like to save at least the last maybe 15, 20 minutes for a few different songs that maybe we can sing together if y' all are willing to do that. And then I have A prayer that I've written, based on what we've talked about, that I would like to pray for this class before we part company for the rest of the quarter and y' all go on to your next Bible classes here at Madison. So the first one is more of just an open discussion question, again, in recognition that we spent a lot of time jumping around this quarter onto a lot of different topics, and we didn't get to spend as much time doing things as maybe I would have liked to. So I'm curious if you could finish the sentence of I wish we could have spent more time studying something. I'm just curious what that could have been because, man, we went wide and deep. But I feel like there were certainly things left out. Yeah. [00:03:34] Speaker C: I thought one of the things you would probably brought up on the mountains would have been Golgotha or Calvary. Just whenever the first week, when you talk about Eden being a mountain and the water flowing from. And I thought about Calvary and Jesus being the living water and flowing from that. [00:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And I wonder if. I don't know. I haven't studied this, but I do wonder if there's something to pull in there about when they pierce his side and out comes water, if there's something to that to pull into it. I don't know, but that would have been neat. I should have looked at that. But just. There's only so much time. Yeah. There are a lot of mountains. Yeah. Yeah. Any other thoughts? [00:04:26] Speaker D: I think if we had more time. We've had two or three weeks just on Elijah. Looking a little. Spending more time on some of the things you brought up. We had to move on from with Elijah's mountain and Moses, potentially Moses mountain. Comparing the place they went to and more discussion about how. Where he's at. Is that where Moses went to? You know, I think there's more there to see of the significance of why and how God where. Why God chose to lead him to that place. I just think there's more going on there. [00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah. If any of y' all have, like, some great insight as to some of those passages, especially around Elijah and how to better interpret them, I would welcome any ongoing dialogue. Another thing that I thought of with Elijah, I might have mentioned it that night, but we didn't have time to get into it. Is we spent a lot of time talking about God is the God of the mountain. All throughout this. This. This class, we talked about God through the ancient Near Eastern eyes and how that ties in with mountains. But two chapters after Mount Horeb is when Israel is attacked, I think by some of the folks west of them, and they get challenged out in a valley. I think it's actually the plain of Megiddo that we were talking about where you could see that from Mount Carmel. And basically one of the things that God says is, oh, I'm not just the God of Mount Carmel, I'm also the God of the valley. If that was not clear to you, then what I want you to understand is my presence is not kept just to this point right here. It's everywhere, which I really like that. And I felt like it would have tied in well. Well, that was more of a warm up question. So I'm curious. I know we've got a lot of smart people here and I think the Golgotha one was a great connection to be made. But I'm curious if, as we were going through this, that there was something there that you felt like, oh, why didn't we talk about this? Like, this seems abundantly clear to me, whatever that might be. I'm curious for your own insights throughout this study. [00:06:51] Speaker C: I didn't know that was your next question. [00:06:53] Speaker B: It's okay. They're mirror parallel questions. So, yeah, you're just one step ahead of me. Wait, students do that to me all the time at school. I'm asking a question, they answer something from like physics, a 300 level physics course. This is 100 level. Like, keep it low level. We live in Huntsville. What can we say? These kids grew up with physicists and engineers as parents. Any connections that y' all made? Here's one. We talked about this. I tried to touch on this throughout the quarter, but I just wanted to bring this discussion back. I said that one of the things that I hope you walk away from this course being able to talk about is God interacting with his people on mountains tells us things about himself. And some weeks I hit on this specifically, and some weeks I hit on it a little bit more implicitly. And some weeks I just forgot to touch on it at all. So let's bring the whole quarter back together. And what stood out to you guys as to things we learn about God on His holy mountain? [00:08:19] Speaker D: One thing I think of is that Isaiah, I think this is on this question and not ahead, but Isaiah 2, where it says the mountain of the house of the Lord. So this makes me think of, we learn that he dwells there. The idea of dwelling somewhere, he's not just there, but this idea of the cosmic mountain. He is a being that dwells there. He's Present. It's more than a temple. It's more than a place. He's not just there to come to him. He's there to dwell somewhere is different than to just kind of be passing by. And so it tells us. It tells us he's not some unreachable thing. He says, I'm here. I'm always going to be here. I think that's important. [00:09:04] Speaker B: But I saw him coming to him on that mountain. There's going to be effort. It's going to take effort to get there. You're going to want to go there. And that tells me that God wants people who are. Who desire and are willing to make that effort to seek him out. Yeah. [00:09:30] Speaker E: One of the illustrations I like that you kind of brought up in your Genesis 1 is just talking about how, like, all of creation is, in a sense, God's mountain and how we're to dwell with him in creation and be a part of that. How he desires us to be a part of that was, I thought, a really great connection. And it shows just one of the cool things about God, which is that he trumps all the other gods in their one little tiny mountain. Whereas with our God, that creation, this is mountain. [00:10:05] Speaker B: And it ties into some conversations that I think Michael, Pam and I have had of. You know, if you look at all of these other gods that were surrounding the Israelites so many times, when you read it through the lens of all the people around the Israelites, it's, oh, you're ascribing this thing to this little deity that lives on this mountain and only lives on this mountain and only controls this one element of the cosmos. But because this whole cosmos is my holy mountain, I run it all. I'm in charge of everything. [00:10:41] Speaker F: Thank God loves us so much that he keeps calling us back to the mountaintop because he wants us with him regardless of what we've done. So I like the progress. [00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it kind of sheds some light. It raises additional questions. I don't know how to say it, but when you read passages like, for God so loved the world, and sometimes you say, like, I don't fully understand, like, people start the ascent and they fall or they fail or they whatever. And individuals do that, communities do that, peoples do that, but the way is still open and is forever open. And then you read that kind of superimposed on passages like, and God is patient. He wants everyone everywhere to repent. Like, wow, I feel like I understand that a little bit better being a parent now, but even still, like the, you know, again, Another passage is when Jesus says, like, listen, if your son asks for bread, like, are you going to give him a stone? And if he asks for fish, will you give him a snake? And just think of how much more the Father in heaven is willing to give you those good gifts. Yeah, I. I don't. I gotta say, I don't fully understand, but I'm thankful. I think. [00:12:10] Speaker D: One other thing, ironically, you know, tonight, Gabriel, he came home, we were asking about what he did in school, and they're doing their middle school history thing about Mesopotamia and starting that whole early culture thing. The first thing they talked about was the. You know, they do different aspects, and his was religion. He was given that. But first thing they talked about was building, you know, the concept of the high place. Brought up in class how important that was, these temples and on high. And so back to the cosmic mountain example. It goes back to how we tell our kids. They envision, you look up, God's up in the clouds somehow. That's not it, but you have to start somewhere. There's an up. And you mentioned about. You have effort to go up to something, but it starts there. But it's up, it's higher. It's not really on a cloud, but the cosmic mountain. That's the only way God could stop, start that conversation to say, well, can you envision this? You know, you think in two or three dimensions. And every culture had that concept of, we gotta go up, we gotta go up. That's the closest we can get. So I think that's interesting that God, he starts there because he knows. Well, he made us. He knows how our minds work. And I think that tells us he's a father. He is. It tells us he's a caring, nurturing being. And not just some of these other cultures who have a trickster that just wants to trip you up and punish you. That's important. The world sees him that way, but he's not. [00:13:40] Speaker G: Something else is kind of going along with that. Why did cultures build their temples up on high places? [00:13:47] Speaker B: It's so people could see it. [00:13:48] Speaker G: Everybody would see it. Everybody would look to it. And that would be what they. Luke 4. When God says he dwells on the mountain, he's saying, everybody can look to me, because you can't hide a mountain. Everybody who's around it can see it. And so I think that maybe I'm reaching a little bit here, but I think that's a very beautiful thought that it's. Everybody can see him, everybody can access him. [00:14:17] Speaker B: Him. [00:14:18] Speaker G: But there is that aspect of you have to put in the effort. It's not that it's easy to go down a mountain. And a lot of times we look at the people who are going out and they climb 14,000ft tall mountains and we're like, oh yeah, that's great. I wish I could do that. Or maybe one day I'll do that. It's like, well, it's there. You can, you can go do it. [00:14:45] Speaker B: You just have to choose to. Speaking of which, Jen really wants to go on a like Mount Rainier, one of these big mountains. She wants our class to go on that field trip together. So, you know, anybody who wants to do that as a, you know, just a big win for this class or a way to have a mountaintop experience for the end of it. Jen is leading that charge and I'm just. This next question, we've already. I mean they're two sides of the same coin. So you've already started talking about it and discussing it based on what you have said. But. Oh, that was not the one. I think, did I jump? I guess I left it out. But what does God's holy or cosmic mountain tell us about humanity? Was the other question. I guess I left out that slide. But what does it tell us about humanity? Which Julie's already kind of touched on and several of your other answers have touched on. But I'm curious, what does it tell us about humanity? [00:15:52] Speaker F: There's a standard. There's a standard that God expects of us and we gotta, that's. That's what our, you know, goal is. Not comparing ourselves to others behavior but to perfect example. [00:16:06] Speaker B: And I think along with that kind of in parallel something that I think I mentioned way back in when we talked about the Eden mountain, like the standard is there. But we. In the class that Armand and I took last semester, we ended up reading some of the Eastern literature on God and his people. And one of the biggest things that they draw upon that I think is present on the mountain is not only does God want us there on the mountain, not only is there that standard there, but humans are made to live on that mountain. Like our purpose is to be back in communion with him. And so yes, we are called to meet that standard, but especially through Christ. God has given us everything that we need to make that journey up and live there with him forever. We're made for this. We are a people who are made to live in the presence of God, holy and without any veil. And I think that's important for us to remember. I don't know If y'. All. [00:17:19] Speaker H: Did y' all talk about Babel. [00:17:20] Speaker B: We did. Okay, so. [00:17:22] Speaker H: Because in the. [00:17:24] Speaker A: You know what? [00:17:24] Speaker H: It's a lot about human beings in my mind as well. But that thing between Eden and Babel of you said, like, we're meant to live on this one mountain, but most mountains we cannot survive on solely. And Babel is one of these examples of humanity trying to make a mountain for themselves that ultimately fails. And so it's only on this one mountain of God that we find sustenance. [00:17:46] Speaker B: And in the prayer that I will say at the end of this class, one of the lines that I weave in is from the Lord's Prayer, do not lead us into temptation, into testing, but deliver us from the evil one. And what you'll hear me say is, as he calls us to other mountains. Another thing that I think is important about us living on the mountain is tying in Isaiah, chapter 2 and Revelation, chapter 21. This idea that we talked about for humanity. If we're designed, if we're made to live with God on his mountain, but on this side of eternity, we can't stay there forever. We can't stay holed up in our communities. And so the idea that we are made, Israel, was made, according to the prophet Isaiah, to go up this mountain, receive the instruction and carry it down, to be a light to the nations, to be someone who showed them the nations, the other families, the way up the mountain. And because they failed to do that, and because Noah failed to do that, and Moses and Adam all failed to do that, Jesus is the one who does it right. But if Jesus is the one that does it right, and we are the body of Christ, if we are the image of God, it means that our duty as the church is to carry on that mission that we as humans, the way. The way that we live. Well, Jesus says, I have come that these may have life and have it to the full. What full life looks like is fulfilling the calling that God has given us as people in his church. To go up the mountain, to be refreshed while we are here on Wednesday night and on Sunday morning or any other time we spend together. And then to take that back out and not just live up there for the rest of our lives, not yet. It's coming. We get a taste of it. The song that came to mind today, it's not in the song list that I've got here in a little bit, but when we sing oh, what a foretaste of glory divine like that is the life we live as people of God that we get that foretaste of the glory divine. So just some food for thought. There's. We already talked about what mountains I might have missed. So here's one. I made the statement at the beginning, and I think if you were here all 10 weeks, all nine weeks, you probably caught a little bit of this, especially because we started in Genesis 1 and we finished in Revelation 22. But when I read that excerpt from the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, one of the statements that they made was mountains in the Bible tell the story of the Bible in microcosm. So as a class, let's start in Genesis 1, and y' all help me tell the biblical story from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 as a class through the mountains. [00:20:58] Speaker E: I guess the pink. I guess the first thing that comes. [00:21:01] Speaker F: To mind is just. [00:21:04] Speaker E: The illustration. Kind of the repeated motif. [00:21:09] Speaker I: Throughout Scripture. [00:21:11] Speaker E: Is that, like, man tries to ascend. In some cases, I'm thinking of guys like Moses, Abraham, like, trying to ascend the mountain and the right way. Noah, another good example. And they fall and they don't do it right. And that is repeated. You see that in Genesis, you see that in Exodus, you see it in Judges, you see it in Kings, all the way through just this repeated pattern of trying and failing. And then you get to the New Testament, you see Jesus, and he goes up on the mountain, is tested, succeeds, is ministered to by God, fulfills his ministry, goes onto another mountain of Mount Cavalry, suffers, dies, and then redeems us. And all of our failings to try to get to ascend the mountain, showing us in ultimate fashion that there's no way that we could ever do it on our own. And showing us that he is the way, the truth. And so I did. [00:22:18] Speaker D: And then, you know. [00:22:21] Speaker E: The end calling that we have is to take that news down from the mountain and distribute it. [00:22:27] Speaker B: You hit a lot of the high points. Any other thoughts to add at any other points in the story of the Bible? [00:22:39] Speaker D: Well, I think in general, aside from just because those are big, like being able to see these motifs of mountains, I didn't realize. I mean, I never really thought how much in the last couple weeks you showed all the mountains. Jesus went on. I never really clocked how intentional. Why? I mean, it is. It's intentional. It was. They were literally used to tell the story. The events happened repeatedly, mountains. And not just as a. Also as a, you know, a motif or philosophically a mountain, but also to. Jesus did this on a mountain to show us these are the high and holy things. Now go forth and do them, I guess. I know they were on mountains, but that's what he was doing, too. He was using them to keep telling the same story. That's another level trying to say, I've been telling you this since Genesis 1, and on some level feeds people. Well, I've shown you what to do. I'm living. Isaiah 2. You've come up to me. You've learned what to do. Now go do it. And every time, it was a mountain and back, a mountain and back. So I guess in one sense, you can't go without seeing a mountain in just about every book. Just from a story, just from a writing standpoint, I mean, there's a cleverness. Again, why the inspired text? [00:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah, we focus a lot in, like, the Book of Judges, for example, the cyclic motifs, and both of y' all touched on that. But it's present throughout the whole Bible. Good days and bad days and good days and bad days. I don't have my tablet, so I can't draw it out. So you'll just have to imagine with me. But if I could tell the story of the mountain just with one single image, it would be over here at the beginning of time that we start. Humanity starts. Creation starts. God starts up here on the mountain. And just like Ethan mentioned, just like Michael mentioned, well, we find that we want to ascend further up the mountain, to borrow CS Lewis from the Last Battle, further up and further in. But we desire to do it by our own terms and by our own methods. And we listen to the snake. And instead of reaching for higher peaks, what we actually find is by doing that, you start a fall. And so you fall and descend further and further to where, even at the end of Genesis chapter 11 or the beginning of Genesis chapter 11, you've got Babel as the false mountain. And then you've got some of these other high points of Sinai, Carmel, Moriah, things like that, but they're just little peaks. But the descent continues and descend continues and continues until we reach the climax, which normally, when we plotted out how stories tend to arc, that we think of the rising action and then the climax at the peak of the story, and then the falling action and all that stuff. But down here, we have, as the spiral continues, that Jesus down at this low point is when he enters the story, he gives us experiences on the mountain, and we start to see what that path back up until we get to Revelation chapter 21 and 22 to where we've just wrapped back to the beginning. That in Revelation 21 and 22, what has happened. What John is telling us is this thing that, especially if he, you know, he's writing to the seven churches of Asia. But if you imagine any Jews who were in that, those churches, they're hearing this and they're like, yes, these are the things we have been told all our lives. Like, oh, to go back to Eden. Like, I don't know if they had a song like that in their liturgy or anything like that, but imagine what that song would sound like. Like, oh, to go back to Egypt. No, they don't want to go back to Egypt. To Eden. Yeah, yeah, but to go back to Eden. And what John is saying and what would have resonated with those audiences is to say that's exactly where we're going. That is exactly where this church is heading. Jesus paved the way back up the mountain. We've got a long way to go. It's been 2,000 years since he came, and we're still learning how to best bring others up to this peak. But we can come up here, we can have that taste of Eden, we can enjoy that time because it is the foretaste of what's coming. So you imagine all the wonderful things that Isaiah that we talked about are supposed to happen on the mountain of the lion and the lamb is one that we talk about. Or the wolf and the lamb is actually how it reads. Or the lion and the child, like, that's what's waiting for us. And not specifically those images, but that image of peace, that image of safety, that image of prosperity, that image of communion, I mean, it's just one giant V shaped curve is the story of the Bible. And we're on that trip back up and let's bring as many others along with us as we can. So before we get into the last question, actually, let's go ahead and do that. I think it's worth spending some time and saying. We talked about a lot of high level theology and biblical study and textual criticism, and we went way down the rabbit hole several times, but they didn't have a picture of Rainbow Mountain in stock photos. So this is my image of Rainbow Mountain for Madison, Alabama. But how does this get executed here today in Madison, Alabama? I mean, I know we talked about we go up the mountain, we receive the instruction, we bring it back down. But like, how? [00:28:46] Speaker E: Maybe still like a little bit existential here, maybe not super practical. But I mean, one of the things that you kind of brought up when you're doing your graphic V here on the table, you start in the upper left corner, you Talked about how you kind of have, like, two choices. You can try to ascend further up the mountain by your own means, or you can. Which actually brings you down, or you can try to follow the ways of Christ and go back up the mountain the correct way. And the first thing that came to my mind as far as, like, practical implementation steps is like, when you go home from church, you think about your priorities. Like, what you're spending your time on is, in effect, like choosing which path to go down. [00:29:38] Speaker J: Right. [00:29:39] Speaker E: You want to choose your ways or you want to choose God's ways. And then taking that time and spending it in an effective way according to God's will, I think is the first thing. I think it's super easy living in a very prosperous part of the nation to chase after wealth and things. We're very fortunate here in the city of Madison. So maybe taking some time away from those things and focusing on more spiritual pursuits, for example. [00:30:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So if I can share something from. That's. That's tough. One of the things that we've been. Some of the books we've been reading for the class we're taking this semester, Arman and me, talks about what you're talking about. The people who write about this call it a contrast community of showing what life on God's mountain looks like versus life on any other mountain, whether that's consumerism or anything else. And where that's hard, hearing that kind of conversation, like, contrast community or however you want to frame it is. It really calls into play some of the passages, like where Jesus says, listen, the only thing you lack is to go and sell everything that you have. Like, if you want to live in contrast to the other pursuits that you see in Madison, Alabama, it makes some of these statements of Jesus carry just a little bit more weight. And to say, like, do I need to. I don't know. Like, I'm not saying. I've got this one figured out. What I'm saying it should at least be something that we're struggling with and wrestling with, of how big do our houses need to be as big as our neighbors? How much stuff do we need to have? How much do I need to be pursuing whatever it is at my job that I find important. How much do I need to be looking towards entertainment? And how many subscriptions do I need to have? Whatever it might be? Like, I don't know. I don't know. But it's hard. I don't know. [00:31:58] Speaker I: I think the church is already. I think Madison Church of Christ is already walking in the right direction, in my opinion. But growing the church, expanding the church, allowing us to have new area allows us to be able to gather the community and give out food, different things of that nature. More than 30% of, like children in this area are get free and reduced lunch. [00:32:19] Speaker B: Right? [00:32:20] Speaker I: So what are we doing about those kind of things? We have, you know, even though we don't have space now, we should try to make space with what we have now and try to, you know, go meet those people, try to be there with those people and see them where they are and realize that, yes, Huntsville and Madison is the most prosperous area in Alabama and probably in the southeastern region as far as like, per capita, how much people make. But there's also a lot of poverty and people here that are stuck in a rut that need help too, you know, and seeing those needs, those people in their need, and trying to go meet that need and show them a better way is something positive that we can do in our community. [00:33:02] Speaker B: One of the churches in Searcy, they, while we were living there, they were actively looking for a minister. And that minister's goal, they called it an outreach minister or something like that. But they told the candidates, we want this building to be used by people who are not members here six days a week. Like that was going to be that person's job of. And it wasn't just MKC is an excellent program, but it was beyond things like that of having this sort of program in the evenings, a job program or whatever else it might like. The whole job description was centered around creativity of how do we make this be something that as people drive by Hughes Road, they don't just see a big fancy building and these people pouring more money into it for themselves. And not even as a community center either. Because as a community center, it's easy for us as Christians to think of ourselves as an NGO and that it's only the humanitarian effort, but there was purpose behind it. To say that this was a way to feed people, to care for them, to make sure that they've got the stuff they need for school or the coats they need for the winter or whatever else it might be. But I've always. That's always struck me to hear that they were actively searching for someone to make sure that their building was used by more than just the members. [00:34:33] Speaker H: I think of in the mindset, looking back once again back to Genesis 1, this idea that, or Genesis 2, I just said where the goal of humanity at that time is to go and fill and subdue the Earth, and essentially to bring the garden out to the world and to raise the rest of the world up to where the garden is. So it's that kind of mentality. We have the kingdom, which is this garden. Once again, how do we raise the rest of the world up and incorporate it more and more into this garden? [00:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think if I could offer a single piece of practical like that people here can do. And I. Y' all saw me come over to my computer. I tried to find the quote, but I couldn't find it. But the quote goes something like this. And if I can find it, I'll put it on GroupMe. But the church has forgotten that the people who carry this message out into the world, Jason and Brandon and Andrew and all of these folks who work here at this building, they do an excellent job taking care of our community here in this building and outside. But to leave the job on their shoulders. We've got physicists and engineers and teachers and dentists. And there are people that you will cross in your own lives that Jason and Brandon and all the other staff here will not get to cross paths with in a meaningful way, in a relational way. And I don't know what that looks like for you. For me, the way that it has started conversations for me is I've just. When I give my introduction on my first day of class, I just say, oh, and by the way, I'm trying to get a Master's of divinity. And that's just it. And that at least opens the door for questions and lets people know if they don't look up what Harding is or anything like that. Where I worked for five years, hearing that a physics professor is taking courses for a Master's of divinity is a little strange. So I don't know what that looks like for you, but whatever. I'm not saying you have to be underhanded or subtle or shady about it. I'm just saying there are natural ways. I'm learning even now. There are natural ways to work these things into the conversations with the people that you care about, that you love, that you work with, that you interact with every single day. And that can be a way that we take care of our community, that we raise the floor level, if you will. So those are just some ideas. And if you would like to continue that conversation, I'm more than happy to. If you logged into the slides, we'll only have time for, like, one or two songs here, two songs that I've got listed there, but they're long, so they're not going to be ones that we get to. The reason that I chose a new anointing is not because it actually explicitly mentions mountains, but the very last refrain that you sing four times over and then you repeat it is, let your glory fill the earth. King of glory, fill the earth. This idea of the mountain being God's glory, being his creation, that's why I chose that song. Living Hope talks about how high a mountain I could not climb. But since I think most everyone knows. We shall assemble and as the mountains surround Jerusalem. If you logged in on your devices and you don't know the words, you can log in there and just click the links. But let's have some songs and then I'll close with a prayer. [00:38:19] Speaker J: We shall assemble on the mountain. We shall assemble at the throne with humble hearts. Into his presence we bring an offering of song, glory and honor and dominion unto the lamb, unto the King. [00:38:50] Speaker B: O Hallelujah. [00:38:52] Speaker J: Hallelujah. We sing the song of the redeemed. As the mountain surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people. Surround us, Lord. Surround us, O Lord. We need to be in your presence. Surround us. [00:40:02] Speaker D: Lo. [00:40:05] Speaker J: As the mountain surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people. Surround us, Lord. Surround us, O Lord. We need to be in your presence. Surround us, Lord. [00:41:08] Speaker B: If you would please pray with me, Father. God, who created the mountain at the dawn of time and who invited humanity to live with you on your mountain. You are holy. You are worthy of all praise. Let your glory fill the earth. Father, we thank you for inviting us onto your mountain, into your garden, into your temple. Since the fall, we've seen how humanity is unworthy to live on your mountain and how we are unworthy to live on your mountain. To live on your mountain is what we desire above all. We know you test us to live on your mountain. Do not lead us into testing, but deliver us from the evil one who calls us to other mountains. When you test us, we pray that like Jesus, that we, like Jesus, live as those worthy to live on your mountain while we wait to live on your mountain for eternity. We pray for contentment to go up and down your mountain daily. We pray that we receive your instruction and carry it to our neighbors. We pray that we gather many to live on your mountain and that many come to live on your mountain. Finally, we pray that we daily live as members of your mountain community so that way we can live in your mountain community forever. That the transition to permanent residence on your mountain seems wholly natural. We pray in the name of the One who lives with you on your mountain and who has finalized the way for us up the mountain. In Jesus we pray. Amen.