8: The Mountain of God

[00:00] Stephanie: Season 2, episode 8. We are continuing in our lessons from the wilderness series by looking at the Mountain of God.

[00:10] Marcus: The mountain.

[00:11] Stephanie: The mountain.

[00:12] Marcus: That’s good.

[00:12] Stephanie: Yeah. Hello, Father.

[00:13] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Good to be here.

[00:15] Stephanie: Always. I’m excited for this episode. We were just on a roll last episode. Oh, also, happy St. Patrick’s Day yesterday.

[00:23] Marcus: Well, there you go.

[00:24] Stephanie: I wore a little green in honor.

[00:26] Marcus: You wore a little green, that’s good. I did not.

[00:27] Stephanie: That’s okay. Yeah, it’s already passed. So if you wore green yesterday, then that’s what mattered, right? Okay. No comment. All right.

A listener wants to know if we have had a special moment with Immanuel that we’d like to share. And since this episode is about meeting God at the mountain, I was like, you know, that felt appropriate. So when I was thinking about it, what came to mind for me was this time that I was feeling frustrated and unseen. It was several years ago where we had a field behind our house still, and I just needed to go out and get some air.

I went to the back fence and looked out over the field at the sunset. It was a beautiful sunset. And I was just kind of in one of those modes where I didn’t know what to pray, but I just like, “Arr!” to God and he heard me. And there was this almost like this wink or flash of light and it drew my attention to a leaf that was blowing in the breeze. It was catching the vibrant sunset through this little hole in the leaf and kind of winking at me. And when I got closer to it, there was like a bug bite. That sounds weird, but there was a hole in it and it was in the shape of a heart.

[01:52] Marcus: Oh, my goodness.

[01:53] Stephanie: And there was this vibrant sunset, and the leaf was just blowing. I could just perfectly see this beautiful, bright colored sunset through this heart shaped leaf. It was kind of like God was like, “I’ve got you. I see you.”

[02:08] Marcus: It’s almost like I set this all up just for you, just for this moment. Wow.

[02:12] Stephanie: So that’s what came to mind. I thought I’d share it. That is no pressure to share.

[02:17] Marcus: I’m not sure if I’ve heard that one. That’s really cool.

[02:19] Stephanie: Yeah. I very creatively call it my Sunset Heart Leaf story.

[02:23] Marcus: Sunset Heart Leaf story. Okay, that’s good. It’s kind of funny when you think about Immanuel and healing things. When I was a kid, I was very afraid of ghosts. And partly, one of the things that, even into adulthood, I couldn’t watch movies that had ghosts in them. It triggered me too much.

So I remember one time we were just honestly in the other room, and your mom and I just brought it up, “I feel like I get triggered every time this comes up.” And she goes, “Well, why don’t we just stop and ask Jesus about this? And I was like, “Jesus, what do you want me to know about this?”

And I remembered being in my room as a little kid and feeling like there were ghosts outside the door and that they were going to keep me from my mom and dad. That was kind of their purpose. I’m not saying I actually saw them, but my sense was that there were ghosts marching the hallway, keeping me from mom and dad and I was trapped in my room.

All of a sudden it felt like Jesus was standing in the doorway and kind of like, “Going to be fine.” It was just one of those things where it wasn’t anything dramatic, but all of a sudden I felt my heart kind of settle, like, “It’s okay.” And I haven’t been nearly as triggered like I used to be. And so that’s one of the first ones pops in my mind.

[03:53] Stephanie: Awesome. Thank you for sharing.

Well, last episode, we talked about the journey to get to the mountain, and now we’re here, so would you set up this narrative for us? What are we anticipating here at the mountain?

[04:08] Marcus: I remember thinking when I was first learning about boot camp and the idea there’s this two year process, and it hit me. Out of these two years, they literally stayed in camp at one location for a year. It’s not like God was like, force march, force march, force march. He was taking them at a relatively leisurely pace. He allowed them to stay at the mountain for a whole year, where they could kind of settle in, establish a routine, get camp life going.

And there they were. That’s kind and gentle of God to not just constantly push them through the desert, but allow them out of this boot camp experience to actually be able to stay put for that year. It just sort of jumped out at me, that was strategic on God’s part to allow them to stay there.

Then you’ve got to go, why? What about the mountain? The mountain is where a couple of things happened. First of all, the people of Israel saw God. And what an entrance! It’s like God came down on top of the mountain, the mountain shook, it says, it was billowing smoke, like coming out of a furnace, black. We’re used to thinking about God dwells in unapproachable light. But this says it was so dark that you couldn’t see.

And there was fire, there was trumpet. I mean, they were terrified, right? It’s like, oh, my word. The God who just wiped out the Egyptians, the God who just took out the Egyptian gods, has just shown up and this is scary. And so it’s just very interesting. And it was meant to be something they would never forget. The day I met God.

[06:07] Stephanie: They hear it, they see it, they probably felt it with the trembling of it. It was a very incarnational experience while also being transcendent.

[06:16] Marcus: Yeah, because I think a lot of times we’re so used to thinking of God as the “Omnis”, omnipresent and omniscient and all the other things that we can theoratize about God so much. We don’t understand for somebody in that age, especially the Egyptian God of birth, the Egyptian God of the Nile, the Egyptian God of this, these things were very concrete, very real, very tangible.

There was a god of the desert, there was a god of this, there was a god of that. And all of a sudden we’re being introduced to the God of Israel as so much above and beyond these other gods that it is mind boggling. And it’s also scary, like, how big is this God? How powerful is he? And what does that mean? And so it’s really interesting.

So when they get to the mountain of God, first of all, they have this encounter of him. Second thing at the mountain is this marriage event, where Moses is the officiating minister. And here’s Yahweh on top of the mountain and here’s the people at the base of the mountain. And he says, “Do you, Yahweh, take Israel to be your people”  And he says, “Yeah, they’ll be my treasured possession out of all the nations on the Earth. Yes!”

And Moses seals that with blood on the altar. And then he says to the people of Israel, “Do you take Yahweh as your God, forsaking all these other random deities? You’re not going to worship the God of the rock over here and the God of the springs over here. You’re only going to worship him?” They’ve just seen everything. They’ve just seen the plagues, they’ve just seen the eleven signs, shall we say, they’ve just seen the parting of the Red Sea. They’d been rescued from the water, the wafers, all those things, and now they’ve…

[08:11] Stephanie: Been rescued from the lack of the water.

[08:12] Marcus: Yeah, they’ve been rescued from all of these things. And now God himself, settling on top of the mountain and shaking and hearing his voice. And they were like, “Okay, yeah, we’ll forsake all the other gods and worship him only!” It was almost like a no brainer. Of course we’ll do this. And that was the entry of the covenant and this covenant established them like man and wife so that’s the analogy that the prophets used from that point on.

And so the mountain was a place where they encountered God. It was a place where their relationship with God was established. It was a place where rhythms and habits were established. The tabernacle was constructed, and not only was the tabernacle constructed, but they were able to get into a little bit of a rhythm of what does life with the tabernacle look like? There’s a morning sacrifice and an evening sacrifice. And with the tabernacle, we’re going to get at this, I think, next week, but God’s presence comes into the tabernacle, too, and we begin to see very clearly this idea that God wants to be with his people.

[09:15] Stephanie: And not on the fringes of his people.

[09:17] Marcus: Yes, and not on the fringes. Exactly. There’s a lot more we could go on. The other element with mountains, too, is that within the ancient near east, the idea of mountains is very much connected to deity. In fact, in a lot of cultures in the ancient world there was this idea that the gods lived on mountains and that there was a garden at the top of the mountain, which is interesting because it brings up kind of this Eden theology as well.

God has brought them to his mountain. There’s no garden up there, but he does feed them. “Here’s food.” So there is something about the idea that Eden was the place where God wanted to live with his family and wanted to be present with his people and wanted there to be intimacy established. And Eden and the mountain of God are closely connected throughout the theology of the Old Testament.

And so here they are at the mountain of God, and he is once again seeking to establish intimacy with his people, for them to get to know him. He doesn’t just demand trust, he wants them to get to know him and understand that he is worthy of their trust.

[10:30] Stephanie: He proves himself to them over and over again with his care and his power, and then also he invites them in. So even, like chapter 24, we see them actually coming together. Am I jumping ahead?

[10:44] Marcus: No, go ahead. Basically, chapter 20 is where you get the mountain shaking and all this, and then the giving of the ten, what’s usually called the Ten Commandments. I think the specific Hebrew word there is the ten words. But God pronounces these words for his people that get engraved in stone and become the essence of this covenant that is now defining their relationship.

And then in chapter 24 is where the marriage ceremony takes place. That’s the chapter that has Moses sprinkling blood on the altar and sprinkling blood on the people and bringing this kind of marriage relationship together. But it’s also where we see the 70 elders of Israel, Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, all going up on the mountain. And it says they see God. And you get this interesting description too. They saw the throne, they saw something that was like blue stone, they saw God and they ate and drank with him.

And I think this is highlighting this invitation to intimacy that God meant to establish here. And that is, “I want you to know me. I want you to trust me. But to trust me, you’ve got to know me.” And here is this amazing experience of these people that not just Moses, but at least 70 and probably more, got to eat and drink with God and see him.

Now, I’m going to also assume at this point that that was Jesus, because a lot of people don’t understand, but the Trinity is all over the place in the Old Testament. And you just think about it this way, when God was on the top of Mount Sinai, God was clearly there. It says God was right there. He’s on top of Mount Sinai. Who was in heaven? It was unlikely God said, “You know what? I’m leaving heaven. I’ll be back.”

There was a God in heaven, and there was this God who was making himself known here. So you see a duality in the Godhead all throughout the book of Exodus, all throughout the Torah. This idea that there is a power in heaven and he can manifest as the angel of the Lord, he can manifest in the fire, he can manifest in other ways and still be up in heaven.

The theology for the idea that God can be in heaven while Jesus is here on earth is completely in harmony with everything that we see routinely and consistently throughout Genesis, Exodus and the entire Torah. So that’s also, I think, just worth pointing out here. Part of the invitation to intimacy involves that it is Jesus himself who is inviting us into that kind of relationship.

[13:33] Stephanie: Continue – application for today.

[13:36] Marcus: Well, it is interesting we started with the Immanuel prayer approach, right? Because this is about an invitation to intimacy that Jesus is saying, “I want you to know me. I want to be known, and I already know you. I want you to know me and I want you to grow in your trust of me.” Now, trusting God doesn’t mean we will avoid trials. It doesn’t mean my life’s going to be easy. I’ve just got to look at the apostle Paul to get that one figured out.

[14:04] Stephanie: Any of the apostles?

[14:05] Marcus: Yes, any of the apostles. You realize pretty quickly that trusting God just means he already has a plan laid out for getting us through whatever we’ve got to go through. David is the one who’s famous for the shepherd analogy, but we see Moses as the shepherd guiding people through here. In a sense, God himself is a shepherd. And the thing that’s always stood out to me about that shepherd analogy is this idea that God has a journey in mind.

He already knows this first week we want to get to here, the next week we want to get to here. The next week we want to get to here. So I’ve got to get them from here to here to here. He’s got the whole journey set up in his mind already of where he’s taking us. And he’s already made provision for every leg of that journey. He’s already thought it through. He’s already made provision. He knows what he wants to do.

So when he says, “Trust me,” at some point, what he’s saying is, “Look, I know right now it might seem a little scary. You’re looking around going, ‘where’s the water?’ But that doesn’t mean I didn’t anticipate this and haven’t already made provision and I’m not ready to take care of this.” And so there is this invitation to intimacy and invitation to trust are always connected. And it’s one of the reasons why I think one of the core attachment words in the Bible is this word trust.

[15:26] Stephanie: Thank you. You and I talked about how it was interesting that right after this marriage ceremony, we get the golden calf and we’re like, “What?!” But then it’s not the golden calf that delays them and keeps them from the promised land. That wasn’t the issue. There were severe consequences and that was addressed, but I think you were saying how there are a lot of people who start the relationship with God and then fall back in old ways or mess up.

[16:02] Marcus: Mess up pretty severely.

[16:03] Stephanie: Yeah. They’re like, “Oh, no, I’ve messed up too much. And why would God take me back?” And God’s like, “No, okay, yeah, I got this.”

[16:08] Marcus: I think we’ve got a whole thing on the golden calf coming up. If not, we need to. But you’re absolutely right. It is interesting that this two year boot camp wasn’t slowed down by the golden calf incident. It wasn’t that in and of itself. It wasn’t just punishment, “You did bad, you don’t get to go into the land.” It was, “You don’t trust me enough to go into the land. If I let you into the land now, you’re going to get annihilated because you’re going to fight me instead of fighting them. And I can’t take you here if you’re still fighting me.” That’s kind of what was happening.

When we get to numbers 14 and the ten spies and the fact that the people are like, “No, we do not trust God to get us through here. We do not trust him with these battles. We’re not going to go.” That was it. When you get to this golden calf thing and this idea you bring up that a lot of people feel like they’ve committed too big of a sin, God’s done with them. He’s washing their hands with them.

I have literally seen people raise their right hand and renounce God saying, “I am done being a Christian. I’ve renounced God in every way,” and within two hours be right back into intimacy with God because it’s their pain speaking, and God understands that. They are in deep emotional pain and deep emotional distress and the things that come out of your mouth, in that sense, God understands and he’s like, “You know what? I am the bigger brain here. I am able to stay relational with you while you go through this mess. You have not committed the unpardonable sin.”

And I tell people all the time, if you want to get right with God, you have not committed the unpardonable sin, because the unpardonable sin would mean that the Holy Spirit’s no longer working with you. And if the Holy Spirit’s not working on you, why would you want to be right with God? That’s a sign that the Holy Spirit is working with you. So, just for people wondering, if you have a desire to be right with God, you have not committed the unpardonable sin because the Holy Spirit is still working with you. And so the golden calf is a good incident of that or a good example of that.

[18:22] Stephanie: Well, I know that’s a big issue, but I know it’s come up over and over again for you throughout the years talking to people, and people have that fear. So I think that’s a comfort and a good perspective.

I’m going to pause real quick for an announcement, which is, we hope you will join us for our online conference on April 13. This is a name-your-own-price event with Dr. Jim Wilder, Dr. Todd Hall, and our own Dr. Marcus Warner on The Body, the Brain and Breakthrough. And it’s going to be just epic, I’m sure.

[18:59] Marcus: Yes, very much looking forward to it. I think this is a unique opportunity to hear from two of the leading experts in the field in the evangelical world today. And I think I’m looking forward to what I’m going to learn from the event as well. So hope you’ll be able to join us. We’ve made it name-your-own-price to make sure that as many people as possible can join and look forward to having you part of that.

[19:26] Stephanie: Yes, indeed. So you can find the link to that in the description.

So we are at the close of our time. Father, any final thoughts?

[19:36] Marcus: Yes. The mountain of the Lord. So this idea of the mountain of God, I think, brings to my mind again this invitation to go up to something, that whenever we are invited into intimacy, we are invited into something higher that calls out something more out of ourselves. There is something epic about mountains. There’s something epic about the mountain of God. And we do see people like Elijah fleeing to the mountain of God, the apostle Paul going to Arabia to where the mountain of God is.

We see people are drawn there, kind of like, I want to be close to God, and I think that that call is always there for all of us to think, “I want to be closer to him. I want to be more intimate with him. And I realize I’ve got to grow my faith.” Now, the good news here is you don’t have to grow your faith first. You can begin growing your intimacy, and through that intimacy, your faith can grow.

I’ve heard a lot of people through the years say, “I’ve always been taught that God wouldn’t talk to me because my heart wasn’t right, that I had to get my heart exactly right. I had to be, in a sense, perfect. I had to approach God just right.” I don’t think so. I think God is much more interested in our honesty than in our perfection. And that is, if I will come to God honestly, “This is where I’m at. This is what I’m struggling with. This is what I think of you. But I don’t want to stay here. I want you. Can you meet me in this?” God will always meet us at the point of our honesty.

[21:10] Stephanie: Huzzah. Excellent. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend. And hey, do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk Trailblazer. Thanks again.

We’ll see you back on the trail next week.