Mount Sinai in Arabia

Welcome to Tribe's podcast. Hey, we just wanna say thank you for making this message a part of your week. Our prayer is that these messages will inspire you to make the name of Jesus famous in your life and to the uttermost bounds of the earth. If you're ever in Jackson Hole, we'd love for you to visit our Tribe fam in person. To learn more about us, you can find us online or at Facebook by searching tribejh.com.

Welcome to Tribe's podcast. Hey, we just wanna say thank you for making this message a part of your week. Our prayer is that these messages will inspire you to make the name of Jesus famous in your life and to the uttermost bounds of the earth. If you're ever in Jackson Hole, we'd love for you to visit our tribe fam in person. To learn more about us, you

can find us online or at Facebook by searching tribejh.com. Good morning, Tribe fam. Lissa and I are currently on our way to The Middle East, but I wanted to make sure to be able to spend time with you on Sunday and be able to engage in content together. And so this morning's service, I got to record just before we hopped on a plane, but nevertheless, here we are all together on a Sunday morning and I've got a really exciting conversation for us to get into. Before we get into today's content, we need to do a little bit of rewinding the clock and talk about as a Tribe family, all that happened this week.

It was late Sunday night that we got news remaining hostages in Gaza were going to be returned back to loved ones in Israel. And Lissa and I were over at some friend's house. We got over there in the evening, we had dinner, we were watching watching the news, we were waiting for Israeli time, the deadline to be reached that was given to Hamas for hostages to be released. And I was trading some texts with my friend, Rabbi Zelman, and we were back and forth and just like everything in The Middle East, things were delayed. And so Lisa and I, we went home while we were watching the news and then to see, to wake up Monday morning to see that hostages were being released was so exciting.

It was so, I was telling Lissa, it felt like going to bed on Christmas Eve and then waking up on Christmas morning. Two agonizing years. And I say agonizing and look at me and look where we are. Imagine the families and all that they've been through and the global community of Jews around the world. And so Monday was an exuberant day.

On Monday evening, we gathered in the town square with the Jewish community to sing and dance and celebrate the release of the hostages. And, we'll we'll show this video really quick of that moment. I wish that all of you could have been there. I'm really proud of our Tribe family. There were at least 25 of us from Tribe that were there to sing and dance and laugh and celebrate.

So it was really great. And I just couldn't be more proud of you guys as a Tribe fam. Well, with that in mind, are you ready to get into God's word together? If you have your Bible with you this morning, would you please turn to the book of Exodus? And we're gonna read from one chapter and we're gonna get to just a couple of different passages from one chapter.

I'm going to turn there myself. Exodus chapter 19. If you are new this morning, I'm so glad that you found us, that you've joined us here in the TMC. There's a connect card on your seat. If you wouldn't mind taking a moment to fill out that connect card, you can either leave it in your seat at the end of service or there's a little brown box by the door as you leave, you can drop it right in there.

We would love to have a record of your visit, and we're so glad that you are with us today. Exodus chapter 19, that's where we're going to read. Exodus chapter 19, we're gonna read verses one through nine and then we're gonna jump to verses 16 through 20. So I'll have the reference up here on the screen, but not the passage you read along in your bible. I'm gonna be reading from the New Living Translation, Exodus chapter 19 verse one.

Here we go. Exactly two months after the Israelites left Egypt, they arrived at the wilderness of Sinai. I gotta pause right there. This is not in the up on the screen, but in my Bible, when I have the verbs, or I have the words after and arrived, in our English text, it is in the past tense. But if you were reading this in the Hebrew language, it would be in the present tense.

And if you're reading that in the Hebrew, may be like, why is this in the present tense? There's very intention, that's very intentional why it is written like this because this whole scene that unfolds at Sinai is not intended by the reader to be read in past tense as if it happened a long time ago. Yes, the actual events unfolded a long time ago, but in the Hebrew mindset and for us today, it is as if whenever we read these verses, it is as if we, the reader, you, me are arriving at Mount Sinai ourselves currently in the present tense. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but it's really powerful. Everything is conjugated in the present tense, even though it happened, because it's for us today.

Cool, All right, all right. Here we go. After breaking camp at Rephidim, they came to the wilderness of Sinai and set up camp there at the base of Mount Sinai. Then Moses climbed the mountain to appear before God. The Lord called him from the mountain and said, give these instructions to the family of Jacob.

Announce it to the descendants of Israel. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You know how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among the nations on earth, for all of the earth belongs to me, and you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation. This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.

So Moses returned from the mountain and called together the elders of the people and told them everything the Lord had commanded him. And all of the people responded together, we will do everything the Lord has commanded. So Moses brought the people's answer back to the Lord. There are some instructions about consecrate yourselves, the people need to be holy, the mountain needs to be holy. We are going to have a significant moment.

You can read these few verses on your own, but it's like, you know, when you went to your grandmother's house and it was a special dinner and she brought out like the nice plates and the nice silverware from up in the cabinet that like, oh, you know it's gonna be a special time. That's what these instructions are for. Then after they have consecrated themselves for three days, we pick up the story in verse 16 and use your holy sanctified imagination to put yourself in the place of the Israelites looking up at the base of Mount Sinai. On the morning of the third day, thunder roared and lightning flashed and a dense cloud came down on the mountain. There was a long blast from a ram's horn or a shofar, and all of the people trembled.

Moses led them out from camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. All of Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in the form of fire. The smoke billowed into the sky like smoke from a brick kiln, and the whole mountain shook violently. As the blast of the ram's horn grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God thundered his reply. The Lord came down on the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain.

And so Moses climbed the mountain. Oh, we need a Hollywood version movie made with all of the cinematic creativity brought to bear on bringing this life to moment. How amazing would that be? The reason why we're talking about Mount Sinai is because Lyssa right now, while we're having church together here at the TMC, Lyssa and I are bouncing our way across the desert in a group of Land Rovers, Land Cruisers to the base of actual Mount Sinai. And so that's why we're talking about Mount Sinai.

And I wanna show you a picture. Let's look at this little Google map that I copy and pasted to give you a little bit of a frame of reference for where Lissa and I are as we speak. Obviously, the big blue area is the Mediterranean Sea. You can see Egypt right here with the lush Nile River Valley right here. This piece of land is called the Sinai Peninsula.

And then down here on the lower right hand of the screen is what's known as the country or the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia. And I don't know if you'll be able to see this in the room, you can see this, but I'm not sure if you'll be able to pick this up on the live stream or not, but there's a little town there called Tabuk and that is gonna be our launching point. So while we're having church this morning, Lissa and I are out rumbling across the desert on the outskirts of Tabuk towards Mount Sinai. So let me give you a little bit of historical background on the geographical location of Mount Sinai. You can leave that slide up there for a moment.

There has been one popular place for the location of Mount Sinai for a long time. And in fact, let's do a little test here. Flip, if you have your paper Bible with you, turn to the back of your Bible and let's see where, yeah, in my Bible, you probably can't pick this up, but in my Bible it has the location of Mount Sinai down in the very southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. And, oh, look what just fell out. I have a happy Easter card here.

Looks like it was handwritten by Joy Abad. There's an Easter basket, an Easter egg, and here is an alien spaceship that is zooming up a cow. So that is very precious to me from little Autumn Abod. Did I say Joy Abod or Autumn Abod? Autumn Autumn Abod wrote me this Easter card some time ago, and I just have it tucked here in the back of my bible as a little treasure.

Okay, so Mount Sinai. The traditional site of Mount Sinai and probably in the back of your Bible has the location somewhere around here in the Southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Well, where did that come from? Little brief history lesson to help put this in perspective. So Israel is led out of Egypt by Moses somewhere around the year fourteen forty six BC.

So almost fifteen hundred years before Jesus is born. Moses leads Israel out of captivity. They cross the Red Sea, which according to if you go by the traditional location of Mount Sinai, maybe they cross here or there's a small flowing body of water called the Reed Sea. It's like maybe like what we would think of here in the Jackson area as like maybe the Gros Ventre River. Even in the spring runoff, you could probably wade across it up to your chest or something.

So not very big. And in fourteen forty six BC, Israel comes out of captivity. They meet with God at the base of Mount Sinai. You know that they wandered in the wilderness for forty years and then Joshua leads Israel into the promised land. And history goes on and the location of Mount Sinai seems to just have disappeared into history.

After Jesus is born, lived, died, resurrected, ascended into heaven, his fame and his life that he offers by the exchange that he offers by laying down our life and receiving his life and following him as a disciple, that begins to gain momentum around Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then works its way into Rome. So that by the time the brand new Christian faith is sending shock waves through Jerusalem and around the world, the Roman Empire quickly begins a persecution of Christians. Persecution under Roman emperors goes on for a long time. Christianity is outlawed, it's ruled. These are the days of the persecution, the underground church in the Middle East, Christians being fed to lions, Christians being used as sport and spectacle in the Roman Colosseum, you know these days.

And then along comes an emperor by the name of Constantine. Constantine. And Constantine, whether or not he actually develops a saving personal relationship with Jesus, Sorry to use all of those churchy words, but it's what comes to my mind at this moment. We don't know, but we do know that he began to be a professing Christian. He followed the Christian religion.

Whether he had a personal relationship with Jesus or not, I don't know. We'll find out when we get to heaven. But he became a Christian and it was a turning point for the Christian faith because all of the persecution and laws against Christianity, Constantine, he erased them, he undid them. And in fact, he went a step further and he made Christianity the official religion of the entire Roman empire. And his mom began to follow the faith as well.

Here's a picture of her. Does she really look like that? I don't know, but she's holding a cross. She's barefoot as a saint. This painting that was done of her in the Renaissance, you can see Jerusalem, you can see various cities in background and this wild olive branch being grafted in.

And so this is Helena and she is the mother of Constantine. And you can think of Helena as maybe the first Indiana Jones of history. So she begins to follow the Christian religion. And again, I don't know why, maybe it's just important for me to designate. I don't know if she was an actual disciple of Jesus, but she was a religious, she certainly was a religious Christian.

Maybe she had a personal relationship with Jesus. I don't know. Again, we'll see if she's up there in heaven one of these days. She is what I would consider to be maybe history's first Indiana Jones. So she has the Hebrew text and the Nicene Creed is also developed about that time.

She doesn't have the Bible in the same form that we have it, but she has these Old Testament scriptures and she's like, I'm reading about these places, but I've never been to them, I wanna go. So she starts a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And it's pretty interesting when she gets to Jerusalem, she wants to find these geographical locations. She actually wants to put some points on the map, actual physical places of where these things are that we're reading about. I think that's pretty cool.

So good job for you, Constantine's mom. She gets to Jerusalem and there she finds where Jesus was born, just outside Bethlehem. So we don't have any historical records of how scientific she was. We don't have any historical records of the methodology that she used to what led her to this conclusion. This is the stable where Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

We don't have any of that stuff. What we do have is when she finds a location, she builds a church, Finds the birthplace of Jesus, builds a church. She finds the cross of Jesus, the three crosses, one of which Jesus was crucified on, the two criminals on either side, supposedly she finds these, she builds a church. She then goes out, she sends people out into the desert to find the location of Moses' burning bush. She Come on church, what'd she do?

Builds a church. Then she commissions other explorers to go out in Would you go back to the image of the map? She sends people out here into this region, scouring the Sinai Peninsula, this vast desolate area to find Mount Sinai and through perhaps folklore stories of Bedouin travelers and trades and people going back and forth on the trade routes, we're like, Oh yeah, Mount Sinai's over there. So essentially she just arbitrarily picks a mountain. The modern day name of that mountain is called Jabal Musa or the Mountain Of Moses and she says that is Mount Sinai and guess what she does there at the base.

That's right, she builds a church. And so for hundreds of years, for centuries, this is what everyone believed. And this is why we have this map in the back of our Bible that points to the location of Mount Sinai as being down here in the Sinai Peninsula. Well, forward the story from Constantine's mom up into the modern twentieth century. In the 70s and 80s, there were these rogue explorers that snuck into the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, guys like Ron Wyatt, they did some really questionable archeology, meaning questionable, meaning not necessarily peer reviewed, scholarly, academic, but more like rooting around with a VHS camera.

But Ron Wyatt, he's a cool, wild dude. You can look him up. And he said that he had found the real Mount Sinai based upon a biblical description, not legend, folklore and Constantine's mom. And he identified the location of Mount Sinai in what is today modern day Saudi Arabia. The problem is he got in there illegally, none of his work could really be independently verified or tested.

And so you just had these wild claims in the 70s and 80s. Now let's fast forward the story again to the year twenty ten ish. In the year 2010, the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia lifted foreign travel bans. Can you imagine living in a closed country isolated from the rest of the world, and we still have this in countries like North Korea, but this huge land mass, the country of Saudi Arabia was completely closed to tourists. No outsider could come in.

No non Muslim was allowed to enter the country until 2010. And it's pretty amazing just to see between 2010 and 2000, whatever Trump's first administration was, where he began to establish the Abraham Accords, which maybe someday we'll talk a little bit more about that, but that has very strong significance. Nope, it has strong potential to fulfill biblical prophecy that leads up to the return of Jesus, but that's a whole another sermon, whole another series. Actually, we'll talk about the Abraham Accords another time. So around 2010, Saudi Arabia opens up to tourists and people began kicking around in the desert.

One of those weird desert dwelling explorers was our friend Joel Richardson. And he goes to a location that in today's modern name is called Jabal Al Luz. Jabal Al Luz is in this area right here of Saudi Arabia. It is where Ron Wyatt originally went and explored And Joel Richardson makes some fascinating discoveries. He would never claim that he was the first person to make these discoveries, but he is the first person to write about them prolifically.

He is the first person to go there repeatedly and he is the first person to bring Lissa and I with him. So right now we're with our good friend, Joel Richardson, and I'm sure we're cutting up and having a great time as we're bouncing around down these dusty roads. So Lisa and I are visiting this. Next Sunday we'll be back with you. We'll be able to give you a report.

If our conversation, which we haven't really had any chance to have a conversation yet, but we will, if this is where the conversation ended, admittedly it would feel spiritually vapid. Yes, we read God's word, but we really have gotten more of a history and a geography lesson. What does that do for me? How does that nourish me or challenge me or feed me? So all of that background to say, why should I even care?

Why should I care about the actual location of Mount Sinai? Why should I care about the significance of Mount Sinai? I wanna try to bring this place that is thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe right into where we are in the TMC and right into what it is that you may be going through in your life. Brian, I could care less about the actual location of Mount Sinai. My marriage is hanging on by a thread.

Or, Brian, I could care less about Mount Sinai. What I do care about is what I'm gonna do for housing this fall as the season change or whatever else is going on in your life. And so I just wanna share briefly with you three reasons why Mount Sinai is important for all of us. Three reasons why Mount Sinai is important for all of us. Number one, visiting dislocation fully anchors the Bible to history and our faith to geography.

For how many of you, don't raise your hand, but you have a personal relationship with Jesus and you know that he's real, but as you read these stories in the Bible, you're like, yeah, the Desert Of Midian, the Garden Of Eden, Jerusalem, Egypt, like you've never been to any of these places. Nobody's been to Eden. Yes, I know, Lissy, I get that. But really for many people, the Bible, when it comes to the geography of the Bible, it is at the same level as the geography of Middle Earth. You know, like the Shire.

Yep, I know what takes place in the Shire and if I'm familiar with the map of Middle Earth, okay, I can place the Shire and then off we go and oh, we see the writers of Rohan through here, the Mines Of Moria as a geographical location, getting to Mordor or Minas Morgul or these different I didn't realize I knew that many Lord of the Rings geography places. I wish that we were live so we could say, all right, who's got a We could play Lord of the Rings geography one up and whoever could last longer naming locations, that would be really fun. But alas, we're not doing that. But really for a lot of people when they read about these stories in the Bible, it's no more real to them than Mordor or The Shire. Like they're just cool places a part of the story.

But why is Mount Sinai important? Mount Sinai is important because it validates the claims of the Bible. These things really happened in real places and it anchors our faith. For instance, if any of you have ever been to Israel, and yes, we are gonna go one of these days, I promise you, we're gonna go, you'll be able to see Jerusalem. You'll be able to see the modern day city of Jericho.

You'll be able to go up to the Golan Heights in the North. And so Mount Sinai is significant because it helps us to anchor our faith and it brings the reality of these stories in the Bible to life. Number two, this mountain gives us a geographical place to keep our eye on for the return of Jesus. What are you talking about, Brian? I know.

Really, really all I'm doing with this statement is to just pull the pin and roll the grenade in the room and we'll let it detonate another time and we certainly will. Let me say it again. This mountain gives us a geographical place to keep our eye on for the return of Jesus. Most of us in this room would agree that Jesus has come once and that according to biblical prophecy, he will come again. Beyond that, for most Christians, the details are really fuzzy, nebulous, and maybe even unimportant to some.

Well, I believe that it's important because if he says that he's coming back, that means that he's actually coming back. And if he is coming back, where is he coming back? Is he going to land on a big airplane? Is he going to come down in Elon Musk's rocket? How is he coming back?

The Bible tells us the way in which he will come back, riding on the clouds, the commander of heaven's armies, the saints accompanying him, those of us still alive on the earth, will be caught up in the air to meet with him in a triumphal procession returning to planet earth. But where does he actually like land and touch down at? We have that verse in the New Testament where the angel says to the disciples who watch him ascend into heaven, the same way in which you saw him leave is the way that he's gonna come back, leading many people to believe that when Jesus returns, he will actually return to the Mount Of Olives. The Bible in the Old Testament says that he'll set foot, that he, the Messiah will set foot on the Mount Of Olives, but does that mean that he will actually return to earth in the first place that his Nikes will touch down. Wait, why is he wearing Nikes?

Well, Nike is a Greek word which means victory. Okay, sorry. That was a language nerdy joke, but we'll see if he's maybe he's wearing sandals. That's right. He could be wearing sandals.

Good contribution Clay, thank you. Wait, how is Clay making contributions on the prerecorded livestream when he's somehow, someway he's done it. I see that hand and I'll get to you. Nancy, go ahead and give him a poke in the ribs. So Jesus returns to earth.

Will he actually set foot on the Mount Of Olives? Perhaps, maybe, I don't know. I think personally, I have a belief that when Jesus returns, he will return in the same manner and way in which God revealed himself to Israel. That's one of the ways that Israel will recognize their Messiah. I think that when Jesus comes back, he's going to return to planet earth on Mount Sinai and then lead a triumphal procession up through the desert to retake the city of Jerusalem.

But keep your eye on that location. So number one, it anchors our faith. Number two, it gives us a place to look to for the return of Jesus. And then number three, the most important, save the best to last. Mount Sinai is the location where God reveals himself to Israel and proclaims his great love for the people of Israel and us.

And it is at Mount Sinai that he establishes his covenant with them. So I'll put this up on the screen here. Mount Sinai is a location, will you go to that next slide? Mount Sinai is the location where God reveals himself to Israel and proclaims his great love for the people of Israel and us. And it is the location where God establishes his covenant with them.

Just before I turn it over to Amanda this morning to lead us in some discussion, let's go to one more passage, Exodus chapter six. So when Exodus chapter six happens, it is before they are at the base, Israel is at the base of Mount Sinai, but God tells Moses, when we get to Mount Sinai, here's what's going to happen. Here's what I'm going to do. And if you've ever participated in a Passover Seder dinner, you should be familiar with this passage and this language. Listen to Exodus chapter six, verses six through eight.

Therefore, say to the people, I am the Lord. I will free you from your oppression and I will rescue you from slavery in Egypt. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment. I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I'm the Lord your God who has freed you from oppression in Egypt.

I will bring you to a land I swore to give Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I will give it to you as your very own possession. I am the Lord. Why is Mount Sinai significant? Mount Sinai is significant because it is the geographical location that God made for promises to Israel and by extension are for us.

Can you see them in the text here? Let me just draw them out for you. The first one is, I will free you. I will free you from slavery. And did not Jesus actually accomplish these things with the shedding of his blood, his death on the cross, and then his resurrection from the grave?

Can you see Jesus at Mount Sinai? I will free you is the first statement. So Jesus breaks the power of sin over a believer's life so that a person no longer has to be sin and to death. Then look at the second statement. I will redeem you.

I will redeem you. Redeem is a marketplace term, to purchase you out of the condition of being forced to be a slave to sin and to set you free so that out of your own free will, you could then out of love and gratitude, lay down your life for Jesus. So I will redeem you out of slavery. Then number three, how beautiful is this? I will claim you as my own.

Remember several weeks ago, oh gosh, weeks, maybe months ago when we did that series of conversations based upon that movie Toy Story, whose name is written on the bottom of your boot? Remember Woody, he could look at the bottom of his boot and he would see Andy's name written on there and that's who he belonged to. When we give our lives to Jesus because he gave his life to us, he writes his name on our heart. And that's why he says, I will claim you as my own. We belong to him.

We don't belong to the world. We don't belong to that negative self talk. We don't belong to marketing and advertising agencies that are constantly trying to get us to look a certain way or buy a certain way or feel a certain way. Like Sky Rizzy doesn't own us, right? I will claim you as my own.

In the book of Song of Solomon, it says, I am my beloved's and he is mine. And then finally, the last one is, I will be your God. I will be your God. How liberating and freeing is that? Most people in this valley and around the world walk around thinking that they are their own God.

I am master of my own fate, captain of my own destiny. And how well has that worked out for the world? When you were your own God, before you invited Jesus into your heart, like how well was that working out for you? Maybe you had some fun, maybe you did some stuff and some things, but did your life not end up in a ditch? How satisfying was it?

How fulfilled were you? Did you have peace? I love this promise from the Lord. I will be your God. And all we have to do is surrender and lay down our life for him.

God of the Bible, Yahweh, will you be my God? So why is Sinai significant for whatever you may find yourself in this morning? Is because Sinai is the geographical place that connects us to these four incredible promises that are available for us to grab ahold of today. No matter where you find yourself, no matter what you're going through, no matter what dark valley you may find yourself in this morning, These four incredible promises are ours to grab a hold of. And so in just a moment, I'm gonna pray for us.

I'm gonna invite Amanda to come up and we have some discussion time that we can have here in the living room of the TMC. And for those of you that are watching the livestream, you'll be able to turn around and engage in some conversation regarding what we talked about with whoever it is that you're watching or as you're traveling with. But the main thing that I would like you to take away from as we go into the discussion time, probably to help tee up the conversation I should say is of these four things, which one resonates with you the most? Which one is easiest for you to grab ahold of? Oh, I will free you.

Yes, that one I love. I'll run with a banner. If you had to put one of these on a banner and run around the town square, which one of these would you put on a banner? And then the next question would be, which of these is the hardest for you to receive? And why is it challenging for you to receive?

So I wish that I could be here for the discussion, but I will be with you next week. And I cannot wait to see you guys next week. We're gonna continue this conversation. I'll have a whole lot more information and stories and insights that the Lord I believe is showing me regarding Mount Sinai. And so let me pray for you really quickly and then we'll turn it over for discussion, okay?

Lord Jesus, thank you so much. You could have remained a distant aloof deity, but instead, because of who you are, you are a deity, a God, the God who longs to be known and to have relationship with your creation. Thank you for the events of Mount Sinai. May we read them not as past tense, but as present tense, ongoing, continuing to unfold for us today. Lord, I pray for my tribe fam.

I pray that you will be the God that frees them. Lord, I pray that you will be today the God that redeems them. God, I pray that today that you would pull them out of whatever identity that they have been wallowing in and that you will claim them as your own and that you will be their God. I command a blessing over our tribe fam here today. We pray these things in Jesus name, the strong son of God.

And everybody said tribe fam, come on, let me hear you say it. Everybody said, amen. I love you very much. I can't wait to be back with you next week. I don't know if Amanda's gonna say this at the end of offering announcements, but just in case she doesn't, because I know it wouldn't be church without it, I'll go ahead and say it.

You got this.