Greetings,
Today I am in Portugal. I have been recording another course of training in the Portuguese language for training in the Portuguese speaking parts of the world. An eighth course is now recorded in video, audio, and written material. Now I will edit the material and prepare it for implementation among my Portuguese family. God is good. Yesterday I was blessed to minister to two churches that are new to me in the Porto area of Portugal. God was good, and I believe that God is arranging more divine connections for His glory.
Isaiah 2:2-3 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
No mountain is made one stone. No mountain is made of one material. Every mountain is made of many stones. Those stones are made of different minerals and materials with different qualities and characteristics. When they are joined together they make a mountain. The mountain of God is filled with a diversity of material, but each stone has something of the unique life-giving character of God. The Old Covenant was given upon a mountain and the Torah (Law) / Tabernacle (Temple) system revealed was one of a knowledge of good and a knowledge of evil. It was a mountain that measured men according to their failures. It was not a mountain that could transform men’s hearts and minds. It could only inform them of their short-comings and failures. It was a mountain of condemnation and death. Each stone in that mountain was a stone of judgment. The truth was written down as something that could be remembered and bound to, but it was not a truth that one could become because of the life-giving liberty of transforming grace. Jesus came to give us a different mountain than the mountain of law and judgment. He came to cause us to become a mountain of grace and truth!
2 Corinthians 3:4 And we have such trust through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 9 For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.
The Old Covenant was based upon a knowledge given upon a mountain of judgment. It as a mountain that killed flesh, but it did not transform the flesh of men to become expressions of the word of God. It was a letter of a law that could only kill. A mountain of death is filled with stones of death. When someone was found short of being good according to the material of the knowledge of good and evil they were judged by the rocks of that mountain. Those found guilty by its measurement were forced to leave the community of God’s people and they were put to death by stones (Num. 15:35, Deut. 13:10, 21:21). I believe that those stones were symbolic of the death we put upon ourselves when we seek to live under a governing system that makes us dependent upon knowledge and temps us to live independent from intimacy with God in our hearts. If we seek to live our lives under an administration of law or conscience we seek to live independent from a place of life-transforming intimacy with God. We were not given life to spend it upon ourselves. We were not given life to create kingdoms that are separate from the kingdom of our Lord and Christ. We were given life to be expressions of the kingdom of God in the kingdoms of men.
The mountain of God is a mountain made of stones that are intimate with God in Christ. Each stone has the quality of hearing God in their hearts, responding to Him in their path of life, and becoming one with Him as the immovable, unshakeable rock in their lives. They too become life-giving stones as He is life-giving to them in all things.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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