The Importance of Jerusalem

As we approach the Holy Days, the city that will be center of our focus is going to be Jerusalem. Christ comes back to Jerusalem. We'll be looking at that city, and of course the news is constantly filled with that city and what's happening there. And that little nation of Israel and Hamas and the other Arab nations around them. There's just this constant strife, constant warfare, terrible things happening to people. That has been going on since going back clear to the days of Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac. So, Jerusalem. I want to talk about Jerusalem today. It's amazing that around Jerusalem, they estimate there's been more battles fought there than any other single location in history.

When you go clear back to the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders, Arab nations have fought over it. World War I, there was a major battle around Jerusalem as the English went and took it away from the Arab tribes that had it at the time.

And of course, since 1948, Jerusalem is the center of what's going on there because it's the center of three world religions. All of them believing in the Abrahamic story. So you have the Jews, no, this is ours. God gave it to Abraham, to Isaac, or from Abraham to Isaac.

And then the Muslims say, no, God gave it from Abraham to Ishmael. And then the Christians say, no, it goes from Abraham to Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And the other two religions say, well, you're wrong, what right do you have to it? You weren't born here, this isn't your land.

And so they fight over it, and it's not going to end. It's not going to end.

I want to give a little, just a little bit of biblical history of Jerusalem.

And then I want to talk about it in a greater context and then tie it into the Holy Days. You know, the last time I spoke, I talked about the Holy Days and some of the meanings of the Holy Days. I want to focus this in on how important this series of Holy Days is, especially this year.

Sometimes I think I'm watching the whole world disintegrate, degenerate, which is going to do. The beast power can't come into power until that happens.

But also the church is under attack.

Individually, the collective body of Christ and different organizations, the whole church is under attack. And we need to be focused in on God and on Christ, and it's the Sabbath and the Holy Days that help us do that.

Now, we just don't go, I'm going to the feast this year, I've never been to Dollywood and all the grandkids want to go to Dollywood.

And that'll be fun. But that's not why we're going.

That just happens to be a little side thing that's happening. We're going there because God tells us to go.

And because in doing so, He teaches us very important things in the doing of it.

When trumpets comes up in a couple of days, it's the doing of trumpets. It's like the Sabbath. It's the doing of the Sabbath. And that's why, you know, keeping this day is so important in our relationship with God and with Jesus Christ as the Lord of the Sabbath.

A little bit of the history. It's interesting about the name Jerusalem, the oldest records of that city, and it had a tribe that lived there, and they called it Shalem, which was actually the name of a god that they had.

The Jews called it Jerusalam, and it has nothing to do with Shalem.

Jerusalam, Salem in Hebrew, means peace.

It is the city of peace, sometimes called the possession of peace. This is where peace starts. This is where peace is, and which is so ironic since Jerusalam has not been a place of peace ever since, well, since there was a city there, even before the Israelites showed up.

And so when Israel entered Canaan, there was a tribe of people that lived in Jerusalem, and part of it was a particular tribe known as the Jebusites. And they took the city, destroyed a lot of it, the Israelites did, except for the Jebusites.

I'm going to show you a little picture here. I can get it to come up if I can remember how to do this. Here we go.

I'm going to walk over here. I'll try to shout for you. See if I can get this circle to be a word.

I pushed the top one, right?

Oh! Now where is the circle? Was it there? Oh, see, I can get you a patient. Okay, this little section you see here is an artist's drawing of what it would have been like.

This is the city of the Jebusites. Now, Jerusalem scattered out all around it on this side. Not so much on this side. This is a valley that goes down through here.

In fact, this valley swings around this way, and if you go up over here, that's the valley Hinnom.

That's Gehenna. So this is hell, right? Biblically in English, that's what they express. This is the valley Hinnom. This is valley Jez And this is the place of the Jebusites.

And so, if we go to Joshua, chapter 15, Joshua 15. And I'm going through this history because the word Jerusalem, the word for the Jebusite stronghold, become important in the biblical narrative, even in prophecy. Joshua 15. And let's go to verse, let me get to Joshua first. Joshua 15, verse 63.

As for the Jebusites, so this is telling about how they took the land, the different tribes they came in contact with. As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out.

But the Jebusites dwelt with the children of Judah at Jerusalem to this day.

So the Jebusites were there all during the time of Joshua. They were actually there all during the time of the judges. Let's go to 2 Samuel 5. 2 Samuel 5. He's talking about David. So this is the time of David. This is hundreds of years after Joshua, all the time of Judges, the time of Saul as being king, and it's the time of David.

And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who spoke to David, saying, You shall not come up here, but the blind and the lame will repel you, thinking David cannot come up here. Now the reason why is there were cliffs on both sides, because there were two valleys that came around this. You have to come up the valley and over the walls, and they had water up there. They could last. No one wanted to take it. It was just too great a price to take it. So they taunted David. Well, the one place he can have is this place of the Jebusites.

Nevertheless, verse 7, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David. Now how many times have you heard Zion in the Bible? Zion is this. Zion is the stronghold of the Jebusites. Zion is used the water. You can hear me, can't you? It's used so many ways in the Bible. Yes! And this is where it comes from. David takes Zion, and it becomes his stronghold, the city of David.

If you go to Jerusalem today, this is still called the city of David. Zion. Back here, you really can't see, you see Mount Moriah back here? There is another higher place behind the city of David called Mount Moriah. Now Mount Moriah is going to become very important here in this whole story. So we have this Jebusite city that becomes the palace of David. This becomes the palace for the kings of Israel. It becomes the capital. Zion is the capital. Zion, I'm not sure what the ancient word means before Hebrew, Hebrew, it just basically means an important place. It can mean a pillar or a signpost. But this is an important place.

You can't take Zion because it's an important place. So here's this important place. And David puts his capital there. Mount Moriah. You really see that, the first mention of it in Genesis 22. Now I'm just putting together all these little pieces of history because we're looking at something that is very important in how we understand how God works, how God thinks, how he interacts with us and with his creation.

Genesis 22 verse 1. Now came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am. So God's talking directly with Abraham. And he said, Take your son, your only son 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 I shall tell you. Mount Moriah begins in the scripture as a place where God tells Abraham to go sacrifice his son.

Zion. Here's Jerusalem, but Zion and Mount Moriah inside of Jerusalem are very important places. Now, I will say something that people don't understand about this command to have him sacrifice his son. God tests us with things sometimes that we don't understand. And our faith must be that he is always good, and he always knows what he's doing, and he will never lie. I mean, you can imagine Abraham thinking, but human sacrifice is repulsive to you.

How could you ask this? Now, we know in the New Testament what Abraham concluded. He concluded, You promised my son would have children. Therefore, if you want me to kill him, I will, and you will bring him back to life because you will not lie. And so he went there to do it. And people say, How horrible! How could God have him kill his son? I want you to think about this a minute. Test means, when God tests us, it means we don't know. We have to trust in him because we have no way out.

We have no way to solve the problem. And we just have to believe he knows what he's doing, but I don't. There are only two ways the story could end up, by the way. One, Abraham killed his son, or Abraham said no. Right? There's only two ways. Well, the first way is if he would have said no, I don't know what God would have done. I would guess he would have probably continued to work with Abraham through other tests. If Abraham said yes, God wasn't going to let him kill him.

Isaac never was in danger of being killed. The test was for Abraham. Something he could not understand. There's only two conclusions, yes and no. In either case, the answer was, No, I can't. Yes, I will. But I won't ask it. No, you don't have to do that. There were only two answers. God was never going to have that boy killed. That wasn't the issue. The issue was Abraham saying, I don't understand.

This doesn't seem to be consistent with who you are, but I trust in your goodness and I trust in your greatness. And so, okay, I'll do what doesn't make sense. So, Mount Moriah becomes a place where God interacts with human beings. The impossible. The impossible God comes with human beings. If you look on here, you can see that it looks like a big... Mount Moriah, it looks like there's a great big wall there. This drawing was supposed to be what this part of Jerusalem looked like at the time of Solomon. That big wall, that's the wall of Solomon's temple. Solomon's temple was built on Mount Moriah.

This is the place where God comes to interact. The impossible God, the Creator, comes to interact with people. It was here that when Solomon dedicated that temple, that something very special happened. Let's go to 1 Kings 8. Jerusalem, Zion, and now Mount Moriah. 1 Kings 8.

And verse 1.

Now Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the chief fathers of the children of Israel, to King Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from the city of David, which is Zion. So what had happened was, David had brought the Ark of the Covenant to his palace and had it housed in an area there. Actually, the tabernacle was set up on Mount Moriah, but the Ark of the Covenant he brought into to be safe and protected. Remember, because the Philistines had stolen it, and he made sure it was safe and protected there. So Solomon says, that's not where it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be in this temple. So he moves it from the city of David, Mount Zion, into the new temple of Mount Moriah. Verse 10, And it came to pass, when the priest came out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord. I can't pronounce the Hebrew. English we usually say the Shekinah, but that's not how it's pronounced in Hebrew. It's the very presence of God. It's God's Spirit in action.

It's the special presence of God. God didn't leave his throne, wherever that is, in that dimension where he lives. But his power, his presence came here. So this is the presence of God's Spirit. He comes here, emanating himself out, like when you receive God's Spirit, right? God takes something comes from him into us. That's what's happening here. Something comes from him that's visible into the temple. On Mount Moriah. He says, verse 11, So that the priest could not continue ministering because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord, the glory of God, the very presence of God, in a very special way, filled the house of the Lord. And then Solomon spoke, the Lord said he would dwell in the dark cloud. I have surely built you an exalted house, and a place for you to dwell in forever.

Now the Old Testament contains many, many prophecies. We'll only go to one. But many, many prophecies about Zion, Mount Moriah, Jerusalem, and God's plan for this area. Isaiah 62. Of course the temple was destroyed in 70 AD when the Romans sacked Jerusalem. And that temple hasn't been there since. There's always been attempts and desire to rebuild that. Although it's interesting, there's probably more Protestants wanting to build a temple there than there are Israelis. They don't see, unless you're an Orthodox, very strict Jew, you don't see the need to have a temple. But of course the very strict Orthodox believe there has to be a temple. And that's why there are tens and tens of millions of dollars always being raised here by Protestants that send it over there so that they can build a temple. Not because they want temple services, it's because they believe the temple has to be rebuilt for prophecy to take place. So they're trying to force the prophecy. Isaiah 62. Look what he says here. For Zion's sake, what's that mean? That's this little piece of land. For Zion's sake, the capital palace of ancient Israel after King David, for Zion's sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest until her righteousness goes forth as brightness and her salvation is a lamp that burns. So this is a future prophecy. It actually ties into the Feast of Taberna. The nations shall see your righteousness and all kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name with which the mouth of the Lord will name. And so this place is going to have such importance in the future. This stronghold, this important place. Sometimes Zion was used to being a pillar. Like, you know, if you're a monument. This monument, this place, all the nations are going to come to it. Let me give down to verse 11. Indeed the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the world say to the daughter of Zion, surely your salvation is coming. Behold, his reward is with him, and his works before him. Now there's many of these kinds of verses are used in the New Testament and applied to Jesus Christ. And they shall call them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord. You shall be called, sought out, a city not forsaken. So there is a plan that God has for salvation to all peoples. And this place has something to do with it. Jerusalem, Zion, Mount Moriah. So now let's look at a messianic prophecy in the Old Testament that's quoted in the New Testament in three different places to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. Let's go to Psalm chapter 2. I know I'm hopping around a lot, but these are pieces of a puzzle. Just put together the pieces of the puzzle. It's going to take us some place that's going to maybe be a little surprising. Psalm chapter 2.

Some in the Jewish community believe this is a messianic prophecy. Some believe it's not. Of course, none of them apply it to Jesus. The New Testament is applied to Him. Why do the nations rage? It's coming a time when there's a great hatred, a great anger in the world. Why do the nations rage? And the people plot a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed. That's where we get the word Messiah. Against the Christ saying, let us break their bonds and pieces and cast away their cords from us. So this is looking ahead to a time when the Messiah is here and the nations gather together to stop Him. He who sits in the heaven shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. He shall speak to them in His wrath and distress them in His deep displeasure. Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion.

We will talk about this on the Feast of Trumpets. On the Feast of Trumpets we'll look at this and say, yes, the nations gather together. It's the great tragedy of history. I mean, well, Adam and Eve leaving, you know, having been kicked out of the garden. All the things are great tragedies of history.

But here we have the ones sent to save humanity and humanity will try to kill Him. Of course they can't. The Prince of Peace comes and has to fight a war.

That is a tragedy that's unbelievable. And here he's describing that. And he says, he's gonna end up Zion. This was the palace. This was the place. Jerusalem was a place where King David established the monarchy. We know from both the Old and New Testament that Jesus' physical lineage came from a Jewish woman who was related to David. The King that's coming is both the creator of David and a descendant of David.

And he's coming to take David's place because David had established where the monarchy would roll from. He says, I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my son today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possessions.

And you shall break them with a rod of iron and shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore be wise, O kings. Be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry. And you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled. But a little, blessed are those who put their trust in him.

And it's all around Zion. In other words, he's coming back to be what David was just a very, very weak reflection of. And that is the government of God on earth. And David had a little bit of God's government. And he was a very flawed king and a very flawed nation. But the new king, the next king, has no flaws. The next king is totally righteous. The next king is divine. And he comes to take over the throne of David.

To rule over all of creation as now that becomes his kingdom, the kingdom of God. Zion seems like such an unimportant place. I don't imagine too many people even know that the city of David is Zion. What do we use the word Zion for today? Except we read the Bible. That's someplace in the Bible. This is about the throne of the Messiah. Look at Zechariah 14. This will be read either on the feast of trumpets or sometime in the early days of the feast of tabernacles.

I'm reading some scriptures you'll probably hear here in the next month or so. Zechariah 14, verse 1. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil shall be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. This is describing the same time that we read that David wrote about hundreds of years before this in the book or in one of his songs. For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. The city shall be taken, the house is rifled, and the women ravished.

Half of the city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as he fights in the day of battle. And in that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives.

Now the Mount of Olives is just the Mount of Hinnom. I showed that. I won't do it again. It's just not too far from here. So how we have another mountain that's right here connected to all this. The Mount of Olives. Mount of Olives isn't far from Zion which is not far from Mount Moriah, which is all part of...this is just one part of Jerusalem. This is the most important part of Jerusalem because this is a place where God's going to complete His plan of salvation for humanity. So He's...and on that day His feet and here He's talking about the one who was sent from God the Father to do this.

On the Mount of Olives, because Jesus told His disciples, you're seeing me go, I'm going to come back in the same place. It was on the Mount of Olives. If you look in the book of Acts. He says, which faces Jerusalem on the east, and an Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west, making a very large valley, and half of the mountain shall be moved towards the north, and half of it towards the south.

And so it goes on and talks about how this is going to happen and His army is going to form... in fact, at the end of verse 5, it says the saints will be with Him.

That resurrection that we will talk about on the Feast of Trumpets, that first resurrection, the saints meet Him in the sky. They don't go to heaven. They come right back with Him. They come with Him to stand on the Mount of Olives. Right here, you know, really close to Zion. And He goes on throughout this whole chapter, which you'll probably hear read, that He's going to rain from that area. He's going to rain from Jerusalem. There will be a temple rebuilt. There's going to be a fake temple that's going to be rebuilt and I don't know if it just may be a tent.

I don't know what it's going to be. It may be a building. But there's going to be a fake temple built, I say fake because it's not of God, before the Great Tribulation. And they're going to start doing sacrifices. Certain things are going to happen. It won't be dedicated to Jesus Christ, but when Christ comes back, there will be another temple built on Mount Moriah and He will rule from this area. Come back to Mount Zion, or I'm sorry, to the Mount of Olives, come over Mount Zion, Moriah, Mount Moriah.

This is going to be the place of the palace of Jesus Christ. Because all nations come, I mean, He's actually here on earth and this is where He's going to be. Suddenly we start to see that all these places are just physical places. But even their names, even what they're called, this is all representative of something much greater. Let's go to Hebrews, chapter 12. Hebrews, chapter 12.

And here, the writer of Hebrews, Paul, is writing to, in this case, it's specifically to Jewish Christians, but it's to all Christians all throughout time. He's dealing with some of their issues. But he's talking about the church. Who are we that we are now called of God? It should not be an issue of pride. It never should be an issue of pride. If we're called of God, it is the greatest grace that God can give. And it's not because we were special. It's not because we earned it. It's not possible. And when we become part of that body of called-out believers, wherever they are, this is what happens. You, for you, talking to the church, this is verse 18, Hebrews 12. For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest. You didn't come to that mountain, Mount Sinai in this case, where that pillar was there. Remember they saw the pillar. And it was on fire. The mountain trembled. They heard the voice of God speak to them. He said, that's not what you've come to. You haven't come to that mountain. And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. They went to Moses and said, please don't let God talk to us. We'll die. And so Moses went up and got the Ten Commandments, and brought them down. For they could not adore what was commanded. And if so much as a beast touched the mountain, it was to be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. There was the presence of God on earth. And it scared them. They were afraid. They trembled. They didn't even respond properly. Because that presence was still there when they started to worship the calf. That mountain was still on fire. It still glowed. There was still smoke coming out of it. And they worshiped the calf, the golden calf. He said, when you have come to God now, it's not like you're going to Mount Sinai. Where God comes to them. Verse 22, but you have come to Mount Zion. And the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, who are registered in heaven. We're not in heaven yet, right? Of course, we'll see in a minute that that's actually not where we're going. We're registered there. When you pray before God, it's not like you're coming before Mount Sinai, you're coming to Zion, the throne of God, the palace in which He rules the earth. He took the name of this little, no place, no name, nothing, Jebusites, and said, no, this stronghold, this pillar, this special place, actually where I am is the special place. And when you go to God, that's where you go. We can't take that lightly. You have come to Mount Zion into the city of the living God. Verse 23, to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel. He says, you go clear back to Abel's sacrifice that all symbolize Jesus. All the sacrifices, everything in the Old Testament, all those ceremonies, the Levitical priesthood was teaching us about Jesus Christ.

You go to Mount Zion every time you pray, not this one that he's coming back to, but the real special place, the real pillar, the real stronghold. There is a new Jerusalem coming. There's a new Zion coming. And it's not completed when Jesus Christ returns. When Jesus Christ returns, yes, he'll rule from here, but it's not completed. And we will learn about that on the last great day, on the eighth day, after the Feast of Tabernacles is finished. Which represents Jesus Christ's millennial rule on earth. We'll learn something about Jerusalem. Let's go to Revelation 21.

You read through here, there's the great white throne judgment. There's the lake of fire, and it's the whole service of the earth is destroyed, and all wicked people that will not turn to God are destroyed. They're not tortured forever. They simply cease to exist. But then something new has to happen. Verse 1, John says, in his vision he has of this time, Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and also there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. All this is going to be destroyed by the lake of fire, by the way, because the whole lake of fire destroys the face of the earth. And then God rebuilds, recreates something that's going to make this creation look pale by significance. And he brings a new Jerusalem, a new Zion, a new Mount Moriah, that's going to be Hisro. Although if you read by the dimensions, it's approximately 1,500 square miles around and 1,500 miles high. It's just a, you know, this Jerusalem will mean nothing.

He says, and he says to John, it is done. I'm the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. And I will give of the fountain of water of life freely to Him who thirsts. And then verse 7, this is why He's done everything. And He who overcome shall inherit all things, and I will be as God, and He shall be my Son.

That's what Jerusalem is all about. Human beings have been killing themselves for thousands of years about who gets to control Jerusalem. Guess who controls it? Guess who owns it? Guess whose throne it's going to be? God brings heaven to earth and lives among His people. I can't even imagine. Just like I can't imagine what it's like when Paul said, we'll receive a spirit body. What's that mean? But it's what we're told. We can get so caught up in all the physical things that are happening. Israel fighting Hamas, Hamas fighting Israel. The pope said recently, or the last pope, that he wanted to internationalize Jerusalem, and so it became a safe place for all religions. Of course, there's about half a billion people that got mad at that were willing to kill each other over it. None of that matters. Zion is His stronghold. Mount Moriah is His temple, or is going to be. And Jerusalem is going to be the place where He rules. And we celebrate the coming Holy Days. Remember this. Remember where the real Zion is right now, the real temple is right now. Remember where the new Jerusalem is right now. And remember as you keep these days, to celebrate that you are citizens of a heavenly kingdom, a heavenly Zion, and a new Jerusalem.