Mt Moriah!

And this was now after God had miraculously caused Sarah to conceive. And so up in age you know that story ever so well. You also know the story of how God said to Abraham, I want you to take your son. He referenced his son as your only son. You take your only son, Isaac, and you take him up to a mountain that I will show you. This is Genesis. So this is before God ever said, when you get to the Promised Land, I’m going to point out a place to you by the which the way it was a mountain. I’ll show you a mountain. But now way before that, the Lord says to Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son.

And I want you to go to the land of Moriah. It was just a region. It was kind of like we speak of the Niagara Escarpment. They talk about the Niagara region, which is a political statement about this area, how it’s controlled, and how it’s governed. But we also have places that we would call neighborhoods or areas. And so the Lord was saying, you had, as I’ve told you, and you go to a place that I’ll show you, but the first designation is getting to the area of Moriah. And when you get there, there’s a mountain and I’ll show you which mountain. You know the story of how he arrived at the mountain in Moriah. And the Lord said that’s the mountain.

Take your son up the mountain. And I want to introduce to you today a literature word, allegory. Surely you’ve heard that word. We don’t use that on an everyday basis, of course. But an allegory is a way of teaching someone a hidden truth, a hidden idea. And so there’s this mysterious something that you want to reveal to someone.

It’s a principle, maybe you’re teaching a child, maybe you want to share it with your friend, whatever, whatever. And instead of telling them specifically the thing that you want them to know, you give them a story. And you would say to them, well, it’s like, it’s like you giving a $5 bill to your little fellow and going to the store and bringing a loaf of bread and the child loses his money. You don’t really want them to know about the child, the $5 bill. But you want to indicate to this person that you want to bring to their attention a principle where a person maybe becomes lax a day, sickle is not focused. So you’re saying, well, it’s like this. That’s an allegory. Jesus used allegories throughout his teaching. He would say, it’s like thus and so. So when you come to the story of Abraham taking Isaac up on the mountain, it’s a real story. It’s something that’s really taking place. But you and I now have the privilege of going back and reading it.

We also have the privilege of looking at the scriptures going forward. And now you and I see something that even Abraham didn’t see. There was an allegorical story being portrayed. So in picture form, we were seeing what God was going to do, where you and I should have paid the penalty for our sin. But on God’s mountain, that mountain, Mount Moriah at the time, God would provide a ram in the thicket and Isaac would be spared. So the ram died in the place of Isaac. It’s not like Isaac was a bad fellow. It’s not like he deserved to die. He didn’t die.

But it’s an allegorical story that Abraham acts out. So I want to bring this to your attention. The mountain that Abraham was led to is Mount Moriah. Every biblical concept, even in the Koran, mentions Moriah. By the way, Moriah at this very moment is the hottest piece of real estate on the planet. Because God had chosen Mount Moriah. By the way, it’s to this day, it’s called. Are you ready? The Temple Mount. I think you’ve heard that terminology. And there’s wrangling and fighting over.

Well, who owns it? Who’s in control? And right now, as you’re trying to work out some kind of an arrangement with Hamas, can we get a ceasefire? Hamas says, yes, as long as we get this portion of land. And we want Jerusalem as the capital of our new nation. And the UN is saying, yes, well, well, that’s okay. That makes you happy, whatever. There’s a problem with that. The whole world knows there’s a problem with that. You can’t just say, oh, well, y’all okay.

Well, you know, we’re afraid of you guys and you can’t kill all the rest of our hostages. We’ve got to do what we have to do. It’s a hot potato. It’s a terrible thing. Who owns the mountain? There’s a unique little story in the biblical passages that will reveal that to you. Now, I’m not here to speak about Hamas. I’m not here to speak about any of that. I’m just saying God chose it and it’s a very important piece of real estate in so many ways. So what was really happening on Mount Mariah was God only focused on the allegorical part

where God was trying to show us through Abraham. What a painful thing he was asking Abraham to do. And you can’t imagine God whispering in Abraham’s ear and saying, no, look, I really know it’s going to really hurt you to take a knife, slit your son’s throat, reduce him to ashes, but there’s really something important. I’m trying to give a picture of something I’m going to do. No, no, no, no, no, no. There was something real happening in the life of Abraham. First of all, we’ve got to go back to the time when God said, leave her of the Kaldis. Very likely a little situation in Iraq. God said I want you to leave.

Say that word with me, leave. It’s an important word. Say one more time, leave. Let’s use another word now instead of leave. Separate. Separate. I want you Abraham to be separated from everything that you know. I want you to leave your family. I want you to leave your friends. I want you to leave. Are you ready for it?

Leave your wine cellar behind. Abraham was not a Pentecostal. We know that. We don’t drink, smoke or chew, or hang around with the girls who do. Separate yourself. Separate. I want you to separate yourself from everything meaningful, special, everything that you cherish. You’re going to forsake for me. You’re right. He almost did so.

Read between the lines. You’ll find out that he had all these camels, probably a thousand. He loaded up with things and said, well, I just have to, it’s like, sir, it’s like you take your wife for a five-day vacation. You’re going to be living on the beach, but she takes a beautiful dress and 13 pairs of shoes. Then you’ve got another suitcase. And when the airline, sir, the guy says, what’s in there? And says, that’s her industrial strength. Makeup. Don’t mess with her wigs. So you know what?

Here’s Abraham piling all this stuff on the camels. Separate yourself. He almost did. And then God miraculously, in the old man’s age, God miraculously causes him and Sarah to get past their years. And didn’t they come together and a child is produced, a miraculous thing? He was old enough to be a great, great, great grandfather. Now for the first time in his life, he’s a father. And this son of his is a miraculous thing. Can you see him parading the little Isaac down through the streets, going down to food land?

Nah, it’d be too expensive. Go to no thrills. I call it no frills. No thrills, no thrills, frills. And so going through there, and somebody says, oh, what a cute little grandson. Hey, hey, hey, this is not my grandson. This is my son. Oh, really? It’s a miracle. Have you not heard about it? Everybody knew about it.

It was in the local gazette. It was on the CBC for once they were telling the truth. It was a miraculous thing that was unfolding. Everybody knew that this is a promise of God. This is a miracle. Watch this. God says to him, you obeyed me when I said separate yourself from my, from Ur of the Kaldis, I want you to separate, separate yourself one more time. But this time I want you to separate yourself from your son. This was diametrically opposite to everything that Abraham had conceived in his mind as a result of God’s revelation to him.

The product of you and Sarah is going to be after you, the Father of nations. You’re going to become the great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather of many nations. And this child that you’re going to name Isaac, he’s going to be the one out of his loins that’s going to come nations. And now God says, killing. Separate. Separate. So when he went up on the mountain, it was God testing him. Will you really separate yourself from that, which you claim, even separating yourself from the miraculous provision and then doing something diabolical in the mind of God, slaying your child, sacrificing a human being that you claimed you were told by God to do? When he got to the face, the foot of the mountain, he said to his servants, he had several servants who went along. I don’t know what they needed. It was something like a three-day journey. 

They had to take food, they had to take fire, they had to take wood and a knife. And he said to the servants, my son and I are going to go up on the mountain and God had already told him, you’re going to kill your son and you’re going to reduce him to ashes. And it’s going to be an act of sacrifice.

You’re going to worship me by your separation. And when my son and I have concluded our worship coming back, my son and I will come back down the mountain and will be as healthy as canal horses. Only if you’re from St. Catherine’s, you know what a canal horse is. My mother used to say, when I was a child, somebody, Mary and how you do it, healthy as a canal horse. Nobody knew what she was talking about. She’s from Hamilton, came down to the canal often, who knows what, you know, a visitor, what, you know how they moved the ships to the canal? They use horses.

How are you doing, Mary? And healthy as a canal horse. A moment of separation, kill your son and then you’ll come back down the mountain and you’ll serve me. He called that mountain. He referred to that mountain. Jehovah Jaira. Do you know what Mariah means? Jehovah provides. Jehovah Jaira means the Lord my provider. So Mariah means in a general sense, Jehovah provides.

But the Jehovah Jaira means the Lord provided for me. My provider. But when God provides my friend, listen ever so closely because this is the gravity piece of my service to you this morning. The blessing of provision follows obedience and obedience will require separation. I got thinking this morning, what did it cost you, David, to not only give your life to Christ, but you cannot separate my surrender to Jesus in experiencing the born-again experience? You can’t separate that from my calling. David got called to Calvary and then he got called into service. No, when I responded to Calvary when I responded to the cross, I was responding to the call of obedience.

You can’t separate the two. The blessing and the provision of God require obedience. And I thought through, what did it cost me? Well, I’ve had different plans throughout my life. I won’t bore you or astound you. I was listless, I was lost. I’ve had all kinds of plans during my early days. At one point I was going to become a millionaire through the oil patch out in Alberta. And you laugh, you know what? I had my first customer signed up. It was the country of Brazil that discovered oil.

They were my first client. But then God spoke to me and I wept buckets and God said, I’ve called you. Do you know what the word ordain means? That means to separate. Do you know what the word sanctification means? You know justification, right? That’s where the blood of Jesus Christ, much like the Ram caught in the thickets up on the mountain Mariah, the mountain of separation, much like that Ram died in the stead of Isaac. And Isaac came down from the mountain justified. He had never died. Will he never have died?

And the servants had to wonder, well, Isaac’s back. This is good. Justification is a theological concept that no matter what you were guilty of when you came to the cross, your sin was canceled and now you’re justified. Justified that I’d never committed a sin. But sanctification has nothing to do with judgment. Sanctification and justification is the doorway to sanctification. And sanctification is a process of separation whereby you become more and more like what justification has announced you to be. Sanctification is a process of separation. You see at Calvary at the cross, God separated you from the judgment.

God separated you from the condemnation. God separated you from condemnation to hell. He separated you from that. But you still have within your heart and your life and you want the Bible to call your flesh, your own desire. You still have a proneness to go back and mess like a dog does with its vomit. Sorry, that’s how the word speaks of it. So sanctification is the separation of my new walk in him coming up out of the grave. Jesus walked in the newness of life. He is now full of the Holy Ghost. And when you and I come up out of the waters of baptism, the expectation is you go down

indicating you had to die to yourself, not die to yourself, you didn’t have to die for your sin. You died to your sin. When you came up out of the baptismal, I’m pointing down here. There’s a ginormous aquarium down here. I hope nothing is living in it. That’s our baptismal. And when you come up out of there, it’s an indication that you’re walking separately, separated from your sin. That’s connected with Mariah. Mariah was the mountain of separation.

I got to move along. It occurred to me this morning for us. You’ll only get this done after time. I’m racing like a racehorse this morning to try and get there. The idea of separation, it’s biblical all the way. Separation, it’s an old story. And still being enacted is still being acted out all over the world today. You plant a seed in the ground and it produces a crop, a harvest. So when I was a boy, I’d go for road trips with my dad, and mom out to Hager’sville to the home of my grandma and grandpa. And this was a time before all of the new-age equipment had been brought into vogue.

And so I saw in my childhood the stoops. Do you know what a stooch is? The harvesting farmer would go out with a shearing of a big moor. He would go out into that beautiful golden harvest of grain. And as he went through and the shears were working away, the grain was falling to the ground, you know, the grass with the head of grain on the top. It would be left on the field for maybe not more than a day. You don’t want it to get wet. You don’t want the dew on it. You don’t want it to get rained on. You don’t leave on the ground for long.

And then the farmer would go out. Then things started to develop. We soon got rakes that could put it into what’s called wind rose. And then you could anyway go back before they had even that technology. The farmer would go out and with rakes, he would gather the grain together in long stocks, right? Because it hasn’t been taken off the stock yet. Then he’d bundle it up and you would put the bundles standing up kind of like teepee style out in the field. And when you drive down the highway, you’d see the stukes. The grain has been stuked.

And it’s standing up there so the wind can flow through and it can dry it out. This is not to dry out the grain on the top. This is to dry out the grass that it grew on because that grass is the future hay. Then the next point in the story, where’s Dave going? We were on Mount Mariah and we’re out on a farm near Hagerfield. Get over it. Then the farmer would go out and would gather the stukes onto a wagon, whatever manner. And he would take it up near the barn. And there when the technology had provided the same, there would be a called a threshing machine. Say threshing. A threshing machine does separation. Hello. So as a child, I would go out to a certain farm where they had children and we had this game. But in the barn, the threshing machine was sitting in the barn. It would be as long almost as from that wall to that wall. Big red, Massey Harris, Massey Ferguson machine. And there was a, there was an exit point here of that end of the machine and an entry point there. So we would play this tag thing. We’d run down to that end of the machine, climb up over the wheels, whatever it would

have. This is dangerous. The parents never knew we were doing it. And where the grain, on the sheaves, would pass through inside the belly of that machine. We’d go through there in our knees, skidding up our knees. We didn’t care. We were heroes. We were heroes. We were commandos. We’re going to raid.

We’re going to raid the enemy camps. And we come off the other end victorious. So we would race through this path where the grain was to go. Now when the grain went through there, the farmer would take the stukes up, pass through the grain, and get the thing going with some kind of a motor. And what happened at the other end, you got, you got the hay, but you got a lot of chaff. It’s a dirty, it’s a dirty, dusty mess. And the grain would be gathered. Now the grain stays in the barn and you know what happens to the hay. This is an old story. It’s still happening all over the world.

Threshing is the means by whereby you separate the grain from the grass. And the grass becomes the hay. Separation. It’s a sanctification process. So this is actually biblical. And please stay with me. Don’t get worn out with me on this now. So threshing is a dirty affair. For years I used to fly out to Alberta to my friends who lived in this town called Kilum. These stuff are signed just outside the town of Kilum.

Watch out for our children. Kill them. That’s what the sign said. I’m sorry. Somebody had a weird sense of humor. So I would go up there, fly out there with only one purpose to help the harvest. So it had a big combine now. Everything’s changed. We’re not snooking the grain anymore. The grain is cut. And at the same moment, the stocks drop into the combining machine.

It’s a combination of processes. And out the other end comes the hay to the ground. The grain goes in the bin. And what comes out with the hay is called chaff. Chaff. Chaff. The chaff is dirty stuff. Gets in your hair, gets in your ears, gets in your nostrils, and you’re coughing and sneezing. You’re hacking and some people can’t even deal with it because they have allergies. The chaff is a dirty, messy thing. The hay is wonderful.

It’ll be feed for the cows. The grain is great. You had some for breakfast this morning. That’s what’s giving you what they call the belly fat. So we all know about that. So we know about the chaff. We know about the chaff. So the allegory on Mount Moriah was about how God wants to separate us from the things that he doesn’t want in our lives. So I want to now go to the slide if we can come up with it and it’s Psalm 1. Read it out loud with me if you can.

Blessed is the man and the woman who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stands in the way of sinners nor siteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law does he meditate day and night. Now when you get into the Word of God and you allow the Word of God and your heart and your life, it’s a sanctification process. And as you get into the Word of God, it will convict you of the errors that you’re making even as a Christian and it’s a mode of separation, sanctific. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth his first fruits in his season. His leaf will never wither and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so.

But I like the, oh again, they are like the dirty, stinky stuff that clogs your lungs. It gets in your eyes. It’s hard. You wash out your eyes and you sit down for your supper, you take a break from the fields and you still have junk of chaff in your eyes. And in the morning you wake up and your eyes are glued shut. I tell you, chaff is your enemy, but the sanctification process will clear out your vision, and clear out your breathing and you need it. So the ungodly are not sore, but like the chaff which the wind drives away. When there’s chaff allowed to accumulate in my life, you can call me windy.

Well, you call me that anyway when I’m in this pulpit. But they just get blown away. They get blown away by every little, they get blown away by their stupidity of woke. They get blown away by, what do they call it now. The original people, they have a new word now. And if you’re not among them, it’s a diabolical thing. And people are carried away with all of these new normals and all this weird stuff. It’s chaff, it’s filthy and it’ll really mess you up. Therefore the ungodly will not stand in the judgment. They’ll not be able to stand up. There’s another wind coming, they’ll never endure it.

Nor sinners will ever stand in the congregation of the righteous. I think there’s one more part. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the chaff hounds will perish. Past your day, where is this going? Where is this going? The second Samuel, oh my time’s gone. Second Samuel, 24. David’s worried about his enemies. So he takes his top general and he says, I want to know how many troops I have. How many soldiers do I have? His general was nervous and he was thinking, I think that we’re not supposed to do that, David. Now you do as I tell you. I want to know what chance do we have. The young man who fought off a goliath and in so doing, discouraged an entire Philistine army is now wanting to count not stones in his purse, but he now wants to know how many guys with spears, how many guys with swords, and it was a diabolical process as the Lord gets angry with him and says, the army is not your means of protection. The army is not your means of driving off fear.

I am your protector. I am. And when you start counting out your weapons, counting your missiles, counting your hand grenades, you make me angry. You are going to depend upon the army flesh. You’re going to depend upon calf and you’re making a big error, David. And David refused to leave. And so God said, I’m going to punish you. 70,000 Israeli Jews died because God let loose a plague. You’re counting numbers. You can reduce your numbers by 70,000. The way of the transgressor is hard, folks. So interesting now. Here’s where I hope this is all going to come together for you and me.

The plague is being directed by a death angel. Don’t ask me to explain that. That’s a difficult concept but just stay with it. It’s in the book. And as a death angel comes upon Jerusalem and comes near a certain point, Jerusalem is on a series of little mountains, they’re not huge mountains, but they’re mountains. And as a death angel comes toward a mountain known as Mount Mariah, God cries out, stop. You’re finished. Mariah, its inhabitants, was spared. The very place where Abraham proved he would obey and was prepared to separate himself from his son was the place where God stopped the plague and said, don’t mess with that

spot. That’s my spot. Remember the first verse I read for you in the very beginning? When you get to the Promised Land, I’m going to show you a place. There’s going to be one of your families that’s going to be honored. There’s a mountain there that I’m choosing and that’s where I will dwell. So as the death angel is coming up to this mountain, the Lord says, stop. This is not to be a place of death. This is to be a place of sanctification. 

This is to be a place where the saints of God are rejoicing and being separated. And guess what was on the pinnacle of that mountain?

Are you ready? A threshing floor. It’s the most famous threshing floor in history. A threshing floor where the wheat separated from the hay, where the hay became food, the wheat became food, the hay for the animals, the wheat for the people. But the chaff gets blown away by the wind. They don’t have to come around with a vacuum cleaner on the top of Mount Mariah. The wind comes and blows the chaff away. Oh, save the chaff. Maybe that’ll work as mulch in my garden. It’s not even good enough to be mulched to protect your tomatoes, buddy.

The wind will blow off the threshing floor. The mountain where God said, Abraham, I’m going to separate you from your son. That’s the place. Now try and get some pictures in your head. Golgotha. Is Golgotha on Mariah? No, no, no, no, no, no. Golgotha is a mountain of judgment. Mariah is a mountain of separation. When the grain is beautiful and delicious, the grain doesn’t get destroyed on Mariah. The sin of the heart and the life get destroyed at Golgotha.

By the way, listen up, listen up, listen up. When they were building that temple, where did they build the temple? On Mariah. If you go down underneath the temple, deeper, deeper, deeper, you know what archaeologists are always digging. You know what if they go far enough down, if they can kind of get some peace around that place and start, you know, stop killing each other. You know what you’ll find down underneath all the rubble of Jerusalem. You will find a threshing floor. When David got there he was pleading with God, stop killing the people, Lord, I’ve learned my lesson. God stopped and God said, good. Now on that threshing floor, I want you to build an altar unto me. David starts inquiring. Okay. Okay. I’m going to build an altar on this. Who owns this? A fellow with a very unique name. He was a Jebusite and believed that originally he was the king of the Jebusites. He was a rich man and he owned the threshing floor. David said I want to speak to this guy.

Bring him here. So Aruna is his name. He shows up and David says, I’ve got a command from the Lord. I’m to build an altar right here. I’m sorry. It has to be on your threshing floor. How much do you want for it? This line is coming right now, a famous line. I said this to somebody recently and they said, is that in the Bible? If you were the one that I helped, they said, oh yeah, it’s in the Word. It’s here today. l think you were the seed that got this message going. David said to Aruna, how much do you want for your threshing floor? And Aruna says to King David, oh, sir, I can’t take anything from you. If you like this car, the hubcaps, the tires, you like the lines or whatever, you know what, you’re a pastor. I’m going to treat you right. I don’t accept gifts like that. I pay Gentile’s price. That’s full retail. Aruna says I’ll give it all to you. I’ll give you the threshing floor.

You can have all the tools. I don’t know what you need, but you can have the tools. They’re all made of wood. That can be your firewood for your altar. And here’s my oxen. You can kill the oxen and offer them unto God. I want to be a part of this. Hey, King David, I’m excited. I want to be a part of this. And David said, here’s uplifting, David said these words, I hope this hits you like a hand grenade.

David said to Aruna, I will not offer to God what costs me nothing. Ouch. So many ones, I said this in the church years ago, oh dear Lord, I got wound up in a church one night, it was a week of meetings, and I said, God doesn’t want your windfalls.

I said, in fact, you win the lottery, you keep your money. Somebody spoke to me after service and said, just to see that nice new piano, did you see that nice new communion table? Sister Nussbaum won the lottery and she gave a ton to the church. I was never invited back to preach in that church. I never understood what was wrong. He said, David, are you talking about tithing? Sure. Some people cannot bring themselves to tithe. What’s tithing all about, pastor? You’re going to start messing with us now. The church needs money. Tithing is not about what the church needs. Tithing is about you needing to be faithful and following after God. Some so many people’ve been saved for years. It costs them nothing, not even part of their paycheck. It costs them nothing. I will not offer to God what costs me nothing.

Dear Lena, I hope this doesn’t embarrass you. Forgive me if it does. I’m in awe of people like yourself because I would think that the cost for you to embrace the loving one Jesus costs you more than any of us could stand to pay. You know that in Taiwan, it’s not hard for young people to get saved. I had a college over there. That’s a part of my life you don’t know about. I was over a college in Taiwan and in Uganda and in Mexico, high colleges. I brought the students from Taiwan, about a dozen of them from my college there. I brought them to our church in Vancouver. I said you need to be a part of our life for a little bit.

So, unbeknownst to me, I was falling right into a trap. They came to see what Canadian Christianity is like. It’s a little different than theirs. Hmm. Somebody here, somebody in Vineland gives their heart to Jesus and maybe their family will mock them or whatever, but you know their lives are seldom in jeopardy for giving your lives to Christ. The cost is pretty minimal. I brought all these young people. I say, young people, the average age would have been maybe 21. We had wonderful services.

And I met with them and I taught them chapel services pretty well every day. They stayed in our church homes. It was, it was glorious. It was wonderful. I met with them one morning in our chapel service in the church. I said, this morning I want to talk to you about water baptism. I understand you’ve all given your hearts to Jesus and you haven’t been baptized in water yet. So, I want to talk to you about that. And on Sunday night, we’ll have the baptismal font prepared. And I said, by the way, I said, I’ll be doing the baptized in me.

And I said, you better have good lungs because I said, I’m going to hold you down until I see bubbles. One of the students came to me. She said, pastor, I love Jesus with all my heart. But I can’t pay the price. I said, what’s the price, honey? My parents don’t know I’ve given my heart to Jesus. Why don’t you tell them? Pastor, don’t you know? I’m a Buddhist. And Buddhists rely on their ancestors.

In my religion, I honor my grandparents. In my religion, it’s part of my life. I honor my parents. For me to be baptized means that I have to reveal. I can come to the college. I can go to the parties. I can do all of these things. But she said, when I get baptized, she said, I know that’s a dividing line. I can’t come up out of the water saying, there I did it. In front of my fellow students, I have to come up before the whole world. And that means I spit on my grandparents.

I spit on my parents. And I say to them, you go to your hell. I’m going with Jesus. He said, pastor, I can’t do it. Of all the students that we brought from Taiwan, two were baptized in water at that time. I will not offer God that which costs me nothing. Separation. Separation from family. Our son was pastoring in wealth. Some people from another country, a woman, came to the service and surrendered her heart to Jesus.

They had a water baptismal service. She surrendered her life to Christ. I have a video of this water baptismal service because it was such a unique event. She got so excited as she said, my husband is going to be coming and joining me here. We’re hoping to go to university. We’re hoping to get landed status. We hope to stay here. But I’m fearful because my husband doesn’t know I’ve surrendered to Christ. When he finds out, our religion will allow him to with honor kill me. I fear for my life. But I’ve been baptized now and I refuse to turn back.

I’ve given my life to Jesus and I can’t turn back now. The reality is so real. Thank God when the husband came, I don’t know the whole story. He gave his life to Christ. Somehow somebody became aware and sent the word back to their country and there was a contract out on them. They fled to Vancouver to stay alive. They went to the church that I passed there. I sent the word. I said, take care of them, but don’t make announcements for them, please. So they went there and that’s a huge church.

So they went to our church in Vancouver and they got lost in the crowd. But somehow, somehow the people that were sent to contract and kill them discovered where they were and they fled again. I understand you right now as they live in the town of Sudbury. Nobody will go to Sudbury and kill them there. It’s too rocky and ugly a place. Nobody wants to go there. I will not offer to God that which costs me nothing. Build an altar on the threshing floor, sacrificial burning. That’s where the temple is today. Well, it’s been knocked down.

Plans are there to rebuild the temple and that’s going to cause a Third World War, I’m sure. Because David bought it, are you ready? You and they just toss this away. Who owns? Who owns? Mount Moriah. David bought it in two sections. First of all, he bought the threshing floor for 50 shekels. Read it in your book. It’s in the Bible. Later, not much later in the scripture in their record, it says, that for 500 gold shekels,

he bought the rest. He bought the whole site. Who owns Mount Moriah? The sons of David. Sorry. It’s okay. I’ll get out with the whole book. It’s reality. I come back to this. Gokkatha is where I surrendered my heart and life to Christ and judgment took place. My sin was dealt with, but when I come to Mount Moriah, it’s a place of praise.

It’s a place of worship. The temple was a place of glory, of majesty, and nobody paid for their sin there. I just gave you this little piece. I think I started in on this and I lost my way. Gokkatha is not in the city of Jerusalem. I visited. It’s outside the walls of the city. And why? Because the Jewish people wanted to Jesus crucified, they didn’t want Jesus’ blood spilled on the ground inside the holy city near Mount Moriah. Last it would sully their celebration for that weekend. It was Passover. Kill him outside the city. So they killed Jesus on the cross on Golgotha. It’s shaped like a skull. It’s called the place of the skull. Interesting. I went after this years ago. I studied it all. I wanted to know about the temple. I wanted to know. I wanted to know all about it.

And I found the most amazing things. And among all of the big pile of amazing things, I found this out. The stones that were cut and designed to go into the temple and the chiseling were all done in a quarry, very remote from Jerusalem. Watch this. Calvary was the chiseling place for the chief cornerstone. First Peter, the cornerstone that the builders rejected. And then every stone, we are living stones. You’ve heard that one right? We’re living stones. We are living stones placed into the temple of the Lord, stone by stone.

You’re all going to get stoned if you haven’t been there yet. Stone by stone. But the stones were carved, chiseled, hammered, and beat until they were. Get this? Absolutely perfect. There wasn’t anymore. There wasn’t a mistake. The chiseling was done down to the most incredible dimensions so that when the stones were put in place, you could scarcely see a seam. It was matchless. It was perfect.

And they were designed to be clones of the cornerstone. That’s what you’re called to be. When they placed the stones in the temple, the only sound that was heard was the groaning of the laborers who managed to get it up out of its resting place and into its final place.

The only sound of your investment in the Lord is the groanings of the altar when you cry out to God.

Here I end with my message.

I’ve gone on a little longer than I should, but that’s the new normal here.