Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast
Welcome to a podcast that bridges the past and present in a transformative exploration of the Bible and faith. At Navigating An Ancient Faith, we delve into the original context of Scripture, mirroring the perspective of its first listeners. Our travels have taken us to Biblical lands, such as Israel, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Through insights from these travels, as well as engaging discussions around philosophy and mythology, we traverse the journey toward our own spiritual transformation. Join us on this journey from ancient faith to modern devotion.
Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast
Symbolism in the Psalms: The Mountain of God
Questions or Comments? We'd love to hear from you!
When the Psalms refer to the mountain of God or God's holy hill, which mountain is it referring to? Were these references merely poetic whispers, or do they carry deeper revelations? By understanding what the mountain represented to the ancient mind, we are able to better understand what the Biblical writers of the Psalms meant by the many references to the mountain of God. Let's unravel the layers of meaning woven into this imagery and gain a fresh perspective on the Psalms' profound messages.
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Hey, welcome everyone to the Navigating an Ancient Faith podcast. We are the Brothers Gwartney. I said I was going to try that last time.
J.R.:I was about to say, there you go, it still sounds weird, but there it is.
David:It may not catch on. But okay, so one point of clarification that I have to bring up. And if you didn't listen to our last episode on Ancient Wisdom, you might be a little bit lost. But I threw out this idea of just referring to ourselves as the Brothers Gwartney. And I was thinking about producers, right? Or directors?<Yeah.> That went by just the Brothers, so and so. And both of us were throwing out, I couldn't remember it at the time, but both of us were throwing out ideas, and I knew neither of us really hit on what I was thinking about.<Right.> So I had to look it up after.
J.R.:Okay. Who was it?
David:Alright, so I threw out, uh, the Walinski brothers, right?
J.R.:The Walinski, yeah. Yeah.
David:But it's not the Walinski brothers, it's the Wachowski brothers.
J.R.:Wachowski brothers. That's,
David:They did The Matrix, right?
J.R.:Yes. Yes.
David:Okay. So that was the first group of brothers I was thinking of. Now, one caveat to that is one thing that added to the confusion is they are no longer referred to as the Wachowski Brothers, and you can Google it if you wanna find out. But, that's just one thing that threw some confusion in there, as well. So that was the first set, alright?<Yeah.> The second one, you were close to. Now, I think you said Something About Mary and...
J.R.:Kingpin.
David:And Kingpin, yes.
J.R.:Those are the same people and they're brothers too.
David:Yes, yeah, and it's the Farrelly brothers.
J.R.:The Farrelly brothers, there you go, that's right.
David:The Farrelly brothers, okay. And the one I really was kicking myself that I could not remember and I was thinking, man, this is, you know, I love the show and I just finished watching it not too long ago. But Stranger Things, right?
J.R.:Yeah. Is that brothers too?
David:The Duffer brothers.
J.R.:Ah, yes. I have heard of them. Yes.
David:The Duffer brothers.
J.R.:Okay. So there we go.
David:Yeah. So I had to clear that up because we were both close, but weren't quite hitting on the concept I was trying to. So maybe it's at this point, it's just best to abandon that whole idea of the Gwartney brothers, but
J.R.:Yeah, but there is, there is a precedent for brothers that have successfully, what, artistically come up with some things, we're trying to tap into that a little bit.
David:I know just trying to net something catchy to just say the Gwartney brothers, right? And it caught on, no one actually knows who the Farrelly brothers names are, right? They're just the Farrelly brothers or the Duffer brothers. Right. But anyway,
J.R.:Yeah, I'd have to Google it. You're right.
David:You'd have to Google it.
J.R.:Or what's the, what's the Oasis.
David:Do what?
J.R.:Oasis, aren't that, that's those are brothers that fought all the time, right?
David:Oh, well, yeah. Yeah.
J.R.:What would the, what would the Niles and
David:Uh, gosh, now you put me on the spot.
J.R.:I know I shouldn't do that.
David:Yeah. Liam Gallagher. The Gallagher.
J.R.:Yeah. The Gallagher brothers. Okay. Yeah.
David:The Gallagher brothers. Yeah. But they just went by Oasis, but yeah, you're right. Liam, and Noel.
J.R.:Well, we just need a catchy name. Yeah.
David:Liam and Noel Gallagher.
J.R.:Yeah, always fighting, always causing drama and things like that so.
David:Yeah, fantastic band, and it seems like they couldn't stand each other.
J.R.:Yeah, that's right.
David:Well, we'll see if that catches on or we'll just drop it. Who knows?
J.R.:Yeah, there you go.
David:Well, today we are going to start a new series on Symbolism in the Psalms, and I'm excited about this series. I think there's going to be a lot to talk about. Hopefully we're going to talk about some ways that you may not be used to reading the Psalms, Ways that maybe you are used to reading, and it'll just be a good reminder. But that's the series we're going to talk about. We're going to be in this series for the next several episodes.
J.R.:Yeah, I'm looking forward to this, too.
David:Yeah, so I might start by just sharing a little bit of my own personal experience with reading the Psalms, and then J.R., I'll get your thoughts on this, because I'd be interested to know how you typically read the Psalms. I have to say that for several years, the Psalms to me were always equated with poetry or worship music, right?<Right.> And so, I, I, again, I have to say personally that, you know, I'm not a, much of a poetry guy, I'd just be honest, I'm not. And I could see how a lot of worship music reflected the Psalms. But the Psalms were not something I went to just to kind of read devotionally. Because I, it was just poetry and music, right? It didn't really speak to me that much. That's how I read it.
J.R.:Right. Yeah.
David:Well, probably five or so years ago, I, I have a prayer book that I read through, and I started reading, paying more attention to the Psalms because part of every prayer in this prayer book, at least has one of the sections of a psalm, and I started paying more attention to what I was reading in this prayer book and what each section was, and honestly, there were some ideas in the Psalms that I thought, man, if I'm honest, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I don't really know what is being said. Well, when I started to actually pay attention to that and bringing some of these other ideas in that I started to actually appreciate the, man, the history, the symbolism in the Psalms, the theology in the Psalms.<Right.> And so over time, it's actually become fun to go back and read the Psalms now because one thing I've learned, I'll say, and then I'll get your thoughts, is when you read something in the Psalms that you don't understand, that's what you should pay attention to and study. Because there's good stuff there.
J.R.:Right. Yeah, that's right. That's the opportun it's the big red flag. That if you don't quite understand it, that's a red flag for you to dig and figure out what it means. And we're oftentimes really, really surprised to discover what we find.
David:Right. And too often, I'm guilty of just going, well, I don't really understand what that means, but you know, it's It's the Bible, so I'll just move on. Or it's poetry, right? That's kind of this poetry aspect that I bring in. It's poetry language. It's poetic. I just don't know what it means. But no, it's like, that's what you should start paying attention to. But I'm interested to know what your journey... So that's a bit of my journey with the Psalms. I have to say that I've really grown to love and appreciate the Psalms in the last, say, five years. But what's your journey been?
J.R.:Yes, it's, it's similar to that. I, I've always seen it as obviously songs or poetry. And because I see it as songs and poetry, I actually probably downplayed the theology in it, you know, because, you know, it'd be like getting your theology from, you know, Phil Wickham or, a Christian artist, you know, something like that. There's good theology in the lyrics of the, Christian music, that we listen to but it's also kind of understood that, hey, this is entertainment. You know, this is, this is to try to bring you into a certain spiritual space. And, uh, you know, if, if they don't have all the lyrics exactly right, that's fine. You know, you, you kind of understand what they're trying to do. It's music, right?<Right.> And so you kind of give them a little leeway. And I've looked at the Psalms that way, to be honest, you know, to think, well, this is a way for the Israelites and early Christians to memorize, probably through rhyming, through being that it's written in Hebrew, they don't rhyme for us today, but they would have rhymed, I'm assuming for, for, ancient readers. And so they would, they would memorize it through rhyme and things like that. And so it was kind of an instrument used to help hammer principles in your head. And, maybe they, Psalms got stuck in their head, just like songs get stuck in our heads, you know? And so, uh, so that's kind of the way I looked at the Psalms. And more recently, and you and I are both reading, uh, a book called The Unseen Realm, and there's a lot of references to the Psalms. And before I started reading this book, I've also picked up on there really is deep theology in the Psalms, and it's exactly what you said. There are phrases that if you just quickly overlook and think, well, they just, they needed a, a word that rhymed with this, you know, or something like that. You know?
David:What rhymes
J.R.:So they just, yeah.
David:What rhymes with hippopotamus? Let's see. That's, and so they just make up this theological sounding word. Yeah.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's like, well, you know, they're, they're like rappers, man. They had to have some kind of, had some, they had to have something that rhymed with something else, you know. But man, there really is a lot of deep theology and, what I'm finding out is that there are references in the Psalms to, uh, just deeper truths all throughout the Bible. And I, I just, I didn't catch that early on in my younger years.<Yeah. Yeah.> They were just more things to memorize, to memorize Biblical truths, and that's what I assumed was the purpose of them.
David:Yeah, and there is that purpose to them, to be sure. There's, you know, things like alliteration, and rhymes, and we know it's poetry by the way it was written. So there is that aspect.
J.R.:Yeah, lots of imagery.
David:And I probably up front have to apologize to people who really love poetry because they're thinking, man, these two knuckleheads don't know how to read poetry, you know?
J.R.:No, I don't, man. Yeah, I'll say that up front.
David:Yeah, we'll both admit that up front. But I think one of the things we want to explore in this series is to not take away from the poetic nature of the Psalms, the music, of the psalm, because, you know, King David, we know, wrote music, and a lot of these were songs that were sung, so they could take with them. But there is a lot more going on than just that. And so I guess what we're saying, if you just leave it at poetry, you're gonna miss a lot of what's happening in the Psalms. So, we're gonna cover five themes that you can see throughout the Psalms, that once you start to see these themes, and once you really understand why this same theme is brought up over and over again, and not only in the Psalms, but elsewhere in the Bible, the hope is that we can start to read the Psalms different and understand it the way that the ancients would have understood it at the same time.
J.R.:Yeah, that's, yeah, that's exactly right.
David:So today we are going to, our first theme is we're going to talk about this symbol of the mountain of God. And depending on what version of the Bible you read, sometimes it's called the mountain of God, it can be called God's holy hill, it can be, uh, the majestic mountain. There's a lot of different ways. It could just be as simple as referring to ascending to a place, right? It doesn't even have to say mountain. But all of these things refer to the same big idea that we're going to talk about today, and that's the mountain of God. And probably the best place to start is, uh, Psalm chapter 3 is one of the very, it's a common way that this is expressed. So, let's see. Do you have Psalm chapter 3 up?
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.<Okay.> Yes Chapter 3 we'll just start in verse 1. It says,"Lord, how my foes increase! There are many who attack me, many who say about me'There is no help for him in God.' But you, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory and the one who lifts up my head. I cry aloud to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain."
David:So the last, that very last reference to the holy mountain is what we want to start to talk about, but this is a good way to introduce this whole idea of the mountain of God. Because in this Psalms, you know, very much sounds like David, typical in the Psalms, but King David, he wasn't king yet, I don't think, but people are after him, he's hiding out. And it says his enemies are closing in, I think, and then he makes this statement,"I call out to the Lord and he answers me from his holy mountain."<Right.> Right. And again, it's one of those things that that sounds poetic, that sounds nice, it's easy to skip by that.
J.R.:Yeah, read right past it.
David:Read right past it, yeah. But what is this idea of the holy mountain? Because if you do a word search of something like mountain or hill in the Psalms, there's easily a dozen references, and a lot more than that, that are kind of close to that. This idea of a holy mountain, a holy hill. And so, the first thing that we want to point out is that this idea is very much rooted in the idea that in the ancient world, gods lived on mountaintops.<Right.> Right? That's where gods lived.
J.R.:Sure. And we talked about it in our Greece trip about Mount Olympus, you know, we tied that together and Zeus lived up there and the gods lived up there. The other thing that's interesting, especially when you and I went to Israel is there are not mountains in Israel, right? We wouldn't call them that. Even if you were from the East coast of the United States and all you knew was the Smoky Mountains, there's not even mountains like that in Israel, you know.<Right.> Much less the Rockies or the Alps or, you know, these jagged peaks that you imagine. And, and even Mount Olympus was an underwhelming mountain considering that we've been to Colorado and stuff like that, right?
David:Sure. Yeah.
J.R.:Uh, it was a neat mountain and, but, but at the same time, it's just over there in, in the Middle East, it's just not that much going on as far as mountains go. And so, yeah, you kind of kind of got to get that idea out of your head of these, you know, the Matterhorn, uh, when, when you say God's mountain. That's not really what they're talking about.<Right.> And in the Middle East, the biggest mountain you saw was what we would call some rolling hills or something like that. You know.
David:Yeah, if you've never been to Israel and you, you have a picture of your mind of what Mount Zion looks like, you'll probably be disappointed because, in fact, I think after they, I think Herod basically leveled the top of Mount Zion off. So it's not even that I think like the Mount of Olives is bigger than Mount Zion is.
J.R.:Oh, really?
David:Yeah, I think so.
J.R.:Yeah. Well, that's the other thing is mountains over there. They I mean there were there were some interesting. It's more like out west, you know, the mesas in Arizona and things like that, it was, it's, that's a little bit more of the Middle East and if you can imagine Herod having the ability to level off the top of a mountain, we're clearly not talking about Mount McKinley or anything like that, right? You know, we're talking about something like a mesa or something like a little bit more like that.
David:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's, yeah, I think that's one of the first things, especially as maybe Americans or Europeans, you have the Swiss Alps, you know, is to, yeah. kind of move beyond is when we hear the mountain of God, we think of the tallest, most majestic mountain you can think of, and that's not what it's talking about, especially as you said in the Middle East, a mountain can be what we would just call a small hill, you know, very unimpressive. Okay, I can see how that hill is a little bit bigger than anything else around it, but that's what they called a mountain, right?<Right.> Yeah, we saw this at Mount Olympus. We saw it at Delphi, where Mount Parnassus was the, it was the dominion of Apollo, right? Like, that's where Apollo's temple was And you just see this over and over again. And you also see it just, it is something as similar as the Acropolis in Athens, where the temple was built on the highest peak, right? And that becomes, in some sense, a holy mountain in Greek mythology.
J.R.:Right, right.
David:And so, that's the first thing we kind of need to, uh, understand, is that when the Bible is talking about the holy mountain, it's actually referring to this ancient worldview that that's where gods lived. Greece comes way after the Psalms were written, and King David's referring to holy mountains and things like that. But it's also important to know that, like, Baal in Canaan lived on a mountain, right?
J.R.:Yeah, Mount Hermon.
David:Mount Hermon was a, was seen as the dwelling place of some of the pagan gods of Canaan.<Right.> So it was not uncommon at all for gods to live on mountains. And I think the other important thing to say here is that, look, we have to also not assume that, well, David's just copying what other gods were doing, or other religions or faiths were doing at the time. Because I think we can fall into that trap and say, well, David's just copying what Canaanites
J.R.:Yeah, he's pulling from them. Yeah. It's more like he's responding to what they already believe.
David:Right. Right. It was a worldview that was so held by everyone that David wasn't borrowing it from anyone. It's just, that was the worldview. Where do gods live? They live on mountains.<Right.> And it's foreign to us. It's foreign to us to say that but that was just so widely accepted and I was thinking about this one example might be to say You know, where's my, where's my social media profiles? Where are they stored?<Yeah.> Well, they're stored...
J.R.:The cloud.
David:The cloud, right? Yeah. Well, we know that literally they're sitting on some mainframe in some huge warehouse somewhere. Right? Right. But we just say the cloud. And... If a thousand years from now, if they would hear us talking about"all my stuff's all on the cloud," they would think, man, these guys, they really think all their information is shot up to the clouds, right?<Yeah.> I mean, it sounds ridiculous.
J.R.:It's a bunch of mystical yeah, mysticism stuff. What do these people believe? Yeah, that's it. That's right.
David:They were into some crazy things there, but. Yeah, that's a example of a modern day concept that we take so for granted that we don't even really, it's just accepted. I don't even have to explain to you what I mean when I say, oh, it's up in the cloud, right?
J.R.:Right, yeah.
David:And so I think in a very similar way, that helps to understand the ancient mindset that gods lived on mountains.
J.R.:Right. Well, we even today, we talk about the heavens, or heaven. I mean, that word is interchangeable. It could mean I might be talking about the weather and the clouds and, you know, or I might be talking about the, the eternal. I don't even know how to say that. How do you, how do you explain heaven without saying heaven?<Right.> Um, but yeah, you know, yeah, the afterlife, I mean, all those are interchangeable words even today. But you're right that mountains have kind of, that was an interchangeable word in the ancient world. But, it's not as interchangeable today. Now we kind of look at that and say, what's the deal with the, you know, Baal lived on a mountain. Zeus lived on a mountain. God apparently lived on a mountain, you know, and, and yeah, it was, it's just an interchangeable idea. Sort of like heavens.
David:Yeah. And in their mindset, it made sense. And, again, I'm not saying because it's superstitious, I'm saying actually they had a pretty good idea of how the world worked and how the physical world interacted with the spiritual world. So it made sense that, where would God reside? Well, God would reside at the highest point that you could think of, right? I mean, think about a mountain. I mean, even today, like, you go to a mountain and you, you... You feel close to God. I think most people would understand that terminology.<Sure.> Right?<Yeah.> So the highest point that you could think of that was closest to the heavens would be a mountain, right?<Right.> And you see the, the opposite of that too, because where do demons and where do the evil spirits reside? Well, the depths of the ocean. Right the lowest place you could think of, right? and So it's not just the idea of a mountain. It's the idea of they had a whole worldview of God dwelt in the highest place and that happened to be mountains, right? Evil resided at the lowest place. That had to be the depths of the ocean. No one explored the ocean. It was just a scary unknown place down there, you know, where beasts would surface every now and then. So that worldview actually helped them conceptualize, you know, where heaven was, where the underworld was. And where would the gods live? Well, they would live on mountains.
J.R.:Right. And you're right. A contemporary idea is the valley. You know, if I say, listen, man, I'm in a valley right now. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And you're not thinking about elevation. You realize that I'm in a dark spot. I'm in the pit. I'm in, you know, I'm in a negative space. And so we relate to that. And so it was sort of this idea of elevation and proximity to God. And so if I say I'm in a valley, I am basically saying I feel far from God right now. God can't see me, even though, we all know that God's everywhere. And we'll get into that here in a little bit, but this idea that, that I am far from God, that I am, I'm down in the valley, I'm in the pit, we do use that kind of language today. And they certainly use that when it came to mountains.
David:Yeah. So one more thing, and then, um, and then we'll move on, but one more thing, we, and we've said this before is that it's important to understand too. When we say that gods live on mountains, it's important to realize that they didn't believe that if you climbed the mountain that you would see the god.
J.R.:Yeah, we talked about that.
David:We talked about that with Mount Olympus. They didn't believe that if you climbed Mount Olympus, because it was very accessible to be able to climb. It would have been difficult, but they could have done it. They didn't expect to see a big throne with Zeus sitting on it, right?
J.R.:Right, but it's worth saying that they did feel like proximity to the mountain mattered. You know, especially in the pagan world, you know, again, going back to Mount Hermon, archaeologists have excavated dozens and dozens of, I guess you call them temples, on Mount Hermon. And because proximity to that mountain mattered, again, it's not that they thought that they got to the top and there's Baal. It's the spiritual, where the spiritual world intersects with the physical world was typically on a mountain.<Right, right.> And so proximity did matter, it's just the idea that, do you think that they could climb up there and there's Zeus? Hey Zeus. Well, no, they didn't believe that, but they did think that the spiritual world intersected with the physical world on mountaintops.<Right.> And that's a biblical idea.
David:Yeah, that's a Biblical idea. And I think that's a good point, that they saw the mountaintop as the intersection between heaven and earth, you could say. And so, while you wouldn't necessarily see the gods sitting on the mountain, that was the place to actually be closest to the god's presence.<Right.> Was at the top of the mountain, yeah.
J.R.:Yeah, that's right.
David:Alright, so, there's one more thing I want to point out about this idea of imagery of a mountain, because I just realized this, this is interesting. Ezekiel chapter 28. And I'll read this real quick'cause I already have it up. Ezekiel chapter 28, verse 13 says,"You were in Eden." So we're talking about the Garden of Eden."You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone adorned you." And it lists all these stones out. And then it says,"You were anointed as a guardian cherub for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked among the fiery stones." Now, I don't know if you caught that, because I had never caught this before, but Ezekiel is describing this vision of the Garden of Eden, right?<Right.> And he says you were on the holy mountain.
J.R.:Yeah, I've heard, it seems like I've heard that before. I'm glad you brought up, that you gave the reference, because I've wondered where, I've heard the mountain of Eden before, that term reference, but I wasn't sure where it came from. Because it's not in Genesis, certainly.<Right, yeah.> You know, this idea of a mountain in the middle of the Garden of Eden.
David:We don't think of the Garden of Eden as having a big mountain in the middle of it, yeah.
J.R.:Right, yeah.
David:But, I mean, Ezekiel just says it, you know. You were in Eden, this is where you were at. The mountain of God, that's where you were at. And it makes sense that... If Eden was basically the residence of God, right, then it would only make sense that they would say, well, there had to have been a mountain there.
J.R.:Right. Whether there was or not.
David:Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
J.R.:So to speak.
David:Yeah. We don't really know whether they thought there was a literal mountain, but it made sense to them that there would have been a mountain there.
J.R.:Right, because that's the intersection of the spiritual realm and the physical realm where God resided.
David:Exactly, yeah. If God resided on Earth in Eden, or His presence was kind of manifest in this Garden of Eden, it would have made sense that, well, and again, if you go back to the idea of mountains in the Middle East, it made sense that there was at least this high point in Eden that they could call the mountain of God.
J.R.:Right.<Yeah.> Right. Huh. So I've, like I said, I've heard that before, but I wasn't sure exactly where that came from.
David:Yeah. Yeah.
J.R.:So I'm glad you pointed that out.
David:Yeah. Well, I just stumbled on that recently and I thought, oh, there you go. I never realized the Bible described Eden as having a mountain in it. But certainly the prophets thought that was true. And when you understand this worldview, it makes sense that, well sure, there was a mountain there.
J.R.:Well it's gotta have a mountain, because all the animals. So you had mountain goats, you gotta have a mountain, right?
David:Or there were no mountain goats. Yeah, that's a theological take I've not considered.
J.R.:Yeah, there you go. That's my final dad joke of the podcast. I won't do it, I won't do it anymore. None of that anymore.
David:Well, to kind of wrap this first point up, then, one of the things I would say is we ask the question, well, where is the mountain of God? Well, it's wherever God shows his presence, right? Like, yeah, that's where the mountain of God is. So, it's not necessarily a specific mountain. It's not necessarily the grandest mountain, like you said, they clearly didn't know Mount Everest, or they would have said that was the mountain of God. No, it had nothing to do with that. It was wherever God's presence resided that became the holy mountain. And you can see that throughout the Psalms.
J.R.:Well, do you think that the idea of the mountain is simply a word to describe the intersection of God and man?
David:I don't think it's only a word or, I don't think it's only a concept. I think it's a concept that reflected what was almost always true. Let's put it that way.
J.R.:Right, because, to go back to the idea of heaven, I think 20th-century people would no longer think that heaven is up past the moon past Jupiter, you know, right. But there is definitely a idea of heaven is up, you know, it's, it's up in the heavens. But the idea of heaven is more of just a, a word that describes where God is or where God resides.
David:Right.
J.R.:But it doesn't have any, it, I, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of a way to say it. It doesn't have a, idea of, of direction anymore. Certainly it did, the Tower of Babel was built to, you know, discover heaven, so to speak. You know, we're going to build a tower to the heavens, and so we're going to build it up higher. So, there's obviously a physical understanding of where heaven was in the ancient world. But now heaven simply means where we'll all be after. Right. In the, in the afterlife, but that doesn't tie to the direction up anymore.
David:No, but I think we also can't just relegate it to a vague notion that doesn't have any real physical correspondence either. Because I think that would miss the point. Yeah. In other words, to use your example of heaven, yeah, we know heaven's not up in the sky, right? What was the Russian cosmonaut who...<Yeah, yeah. Yeah.> went up in the heaven said, I don't know. I've been in the heavens and I don't see God. You just think you knucklehead, you know, no concept of what anyone's talking about when they talk about heaven. But there is something about the idea of heaven being up that I think is physical, too, in the idea that, like, you raise your eyes upward, right?<Right.> And everyone understands what that is. I mean, what are you looking at when you're raising your eyes upward?
J.R.:Right. Yeah, that's right.
David:But it's physical. It's a physical act, right? And we all know that, heaven, isn't at the bottom of the ocean as well, right? That's down. That's the underworld. And so, I say all that to say, look, I don't know, you know, where heaven is, but there's something physical about this too, and I don't want to talk about these concepts and just relegate them to the idea of a vague notion. That when the Psalms is talking about the mountain of God, it could be a small hill, but it is definitely an elevated point above everything else.
J.R.:Well, that's why I think it's helpful to think about it as the spiritual realm and the physical realm.<Yeah.> And it does make sense, intuitive sense, that the mountain would be the intersection of those two. But the idea of heaven, well, that's the spiritual realm. Yes, we, we have lofty ideas and we look up and, there's a personification of a direction. Even though we're talking about the spiritual realm, we're just talking about something that's outside the physical world. So therefore, the necessity of it being up is not necessary. But yeah, when you're talking about the spiritual world, it's natural to put our physical directions, uh, lay it over top of that. Yes.<Yeah. Yeah.> Okay.
David:So getting back to this question of where the mountain of God is, you know, we said wherever God shows his presence. There's another psalm that I want to take a look at is Psalm 68, and we'll read a couple of verses from that. I actually have it up if you want me to read it, so.
J.R.:You got it? Okay, go ahead.
David:Because this is an interesting one. Psalm chapter 68, verse 15 says,"Mount Bashan, majestic mountain," and you were saying something earlier about that that I'll let you share."Mount Bashan, rugged mountain. Why gaze in envy, you rugged mountain, at the mountain where God chooses to reign, where the Lord himself will dwell forever?" So there's this idea of the mountain where God chooses to dwell, right?<Right.>"The chariots of God are 10,000, thousands of thousands. The Lord has come from Sinai into his sanctuary. When you ascended on high, you took many captives, you received gifts from people, even from the rebellious, that you, Lord God, might dwell there." So this is an interesting picture being painted because this is actually moving beyond the poetic language. This is actually a picture of God moving from Mount Sinai to Mount Zion.<Right.> Right? This is God processing, kind of following the children of Israel as they're actually entering the Promised Land. This is God processing from Mount Sinai, saying that my new dwelling place is going to be Mount Zion. So, if you take a step back, this is God actually saying, my holy mountain was Mount Sinai, but I'm moving and I'm going to move to Mount Zion. Which that's an interesting idea, you know?
J.R.:No, this whole psalm is interesting. And what we were talking about earlier is when it says Mount Bashan, well, first of all, Mount Bashan is Mount Hermon. It's the same, same thing. Bashan is the region of Mount Hermon. What we now call Mount Hermon as the mountain, Bashan was that region. So Mount Bashan is Mount Hermon and Mount Hermon is obviously associated with the angels falling to earth. It's much more of a sinister, the place of Baal, uh, it's much more of a sinister idea or a pagan idea, than simply seeing it as God's towering mountain, which is what my Bible says. So the first thing is, is understanding that Mount Bashan is Mount Hermon, which is...
David:Yeah. And we'll talk about this on another episode. And that's one thing I'll throw in real quick and then turn it back over is a lot of these concepts and verse and Psalms, we'll actually pick back up a different aspect in a later episode. And this is going to be one of those, but yeah, go on with Mount Bashan.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, but it says God's towering mountain. But if, if you look at the Hebrew, it is the mountain of Elohim, which we typically associate with God. But it can also mean gods. And so the idea of Mount Bashan is God's towering mountain can also be seen as Mount Bashan, the mountain of the gods, which actually ties into the idea of Mount Hermon a little bit more, a little bit better from what we understand about Mount Hermon throughout the Bible.
David:Right. Because Mount Hermon and Mount Bashan were never mentioned as the mountains of God.
J.R.:Right. Right. And so when you see that, you know, Mount Bashan with many peaks, why gaze with envy, that actually makes a little bit more sense to say, yeah, the mountain of the gods... Mount Hermon, Baal's, residence. Why are you looking enviously at Mount Sinai?<Right.> That actually makes that a little bit clearer for me.
David:It actually makes a lot of sense, and it's kind of humorous, when you step back, because, like you said, so, you can almost picture them processing past the mountains in the north, Mount Bashan, and, Mount Hermon, and as they walk by, they're like, why do you gaze in envy? It's almost like... Oh, what's the matter, Mount Bashan? God didn't choose you, did he?
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:Have fun, Baal, with your, you know, have your little, have your little congregation on your little stupid mountain. But God's passing by, and he's going to Zion, right?
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, the real party's over here.
David:Yeah, yeah, the real party's over here, exactly. And so it's, uh, again, this is a different episode that we will actually cover, but it's all, it's making fun<Sure.> of the Canaanite gods and the Canaanite mountain of god.
J.R.:Right, yeah, that's right.
David:Yeah And so, you know that really paints a much different picture of this idea. God's picking up everything They're going from Sinai. They're passing Mount Bashan. You can see, you know, these foreign gods looking on envy. Wow, you know, the true God Yahweh. He's not coming here, is he? No, he's not. He's going to Zion. And they all pass by and they say, oh, why are you gazing in envy? Too bad, you know.
J.R.:But it's still that interesting idea of God picking up and moving mountains.<Yeah.> I want to go from this mountain to that mountain. And in the meantime, this pagan mountain is looking in envy. And it's just, it's just kind of an interesting concept that we don't really think about, especially when it comes to mountains.<Right.> But, but that, yeah, that God's presence intersects in, in the form of mountains in the ancient world.
David:Right. And so when you read one of the Psalms and it mentions the mountain of God, even just what we've covered so far, there's a lot more to that imagery than just, oh, David happened to be sitting on a mountain at the time, right?<Right.> Right, I mean, there was a lot going, there was rivalry going on here. It was an honor to be chosen as the mountain of God.<Sure.> Yeah, yeah. Well, moving on to the next point, we kind of have some broad points here, but we'll tend to go off topic, but there's this idea of what it meant to be in God's presence by being on the mountain. You actually kind of alluded to this at the beginning of this podcast as well. But, do you want to read Psalm 84:2 and 3?
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, I've got that. Okay."My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home and a swallow, a nest for herself, where she may have her young. A place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God."
David:Yeah, so this psalm that you just read doesn't mention a mountain, but it is referring to the place of the Temple, which is the Temple Mount, which is Mount Zion. So, again, imagery of the Temple is also imagery of the Holy Mountain. I guess that's, that's one of the things I would say here in the tie in. But it's interesting that the person who wrote this psalm is, and this is one of those ones that I read a lot, and there's something really cool about it, but it's also kind of foreign to us, is this idea of the writer of this is envious of the sparrows that have built a nest in the Temple, right? And he's envious because they get to be close to the presence of God all the time, right? And so, this is a psalm of pilgrimage. This is, you know,"My soul yearns and faints for the courts of the Lord." I can't wait to go to Jerusalem and visit the Temple again, because that's where I'm going to be closest to God, right? And he's envious of the sparrows because they actually live there all the time. I just think that's kind of a cool imagery. That's some of the poetic imagery that I can appreciate.
J.R.:Right, but that idea of that proximity to the temple or proximity to the mountain was proximity to God's presence.
David:Right. That was the point you had brought up earlier, that to be close to the mountain was to be close to God. And you'll see this imagery also all throughout the Psalms. Something very similar to this is, I long to be near the temple. I can't wait to go to the temple and be in the presence of God, right?<Right.> And so it's this idea that the closer you live to a holy mountain or a sacred mountain, the more you would experience God's presence and protection and blessing. And that was a very much an ancient idea as well. Now this is kind of a foreign idea, I think, to us, because we've been raised to believe and there's a lot of truth to it, but let me explain this. We've been raised to believe that God is everywhere.<Sure.> Right? So this idea that, and I've even heard people say, you know, oh, I feel sorry for the people in the Old Testament who longed to go to the Temple Mount just to experience God's presence. And, again, I think it's a bit of a misunderstanding of what's being said, because they're actually referring to this ancient idea that if there was a holy mountain, that the closer you were to that mountain, the more you enjoyed the protection of God who resided there. Right? So it's, it's not just that as soon as I walk away, I'm not in the presence of God.
J.R.:I'm no longer under God's protection.
David:Right, right. That's not what they're talking about. It's that the closer I am aligned with that mountain, the more I experience, the blessings, the protection, and the presence of the deity that lives on that mountain.
J.R.:Yeah, and we've talked about this before, about the value of being in a holy place. And, we would, you know, in the West, we would just say something like church, or, you talked about going up to the cabin in the mountains.<Mm hmm.> But, yeah, the value of simply being in a holy space. I think, all we're saying and all that the ancient writers of the writer of the psalm was saying is that there's, there's something about being in that space where the focus is on God, where the busyness of life is quieted down, where the culture is interacting with the spiritual. And where the main focus is that we think about eternity for, a few hours, you know, when we visit church or we visit the temple, something like that. And it, and it's true, it's just simply saying that I want to be in that space where I'm surrounded by other people who have the same thoughts, who, who are trying to ascend to the same place. And to be part of that community where we kind of all have that same focus, and we're all gazing upwards, so to speak. And I think that's what they're pointing out here.
David:Yeah, there's definitely, I think, a communal aspect that we can relate to. That, you know, I wouldn't just go to the temple and be there by myself. In fact, if you were talking about being part of a pilgrimage, a lot of your countrymen were traveling with you, and there was a sense that we were going to go together to experience this.<Yeah.> So there's that communal element. There's the element of sacred space. So all these things play into that idea that I think is, it's sometimes hard for us because, well, in the New Testament, you know, we get the concept, and it's not an incorrect concept, that at Pentecost that the Holy Spirit appears, finally. And the Holy Spirit kind of overcame this barrier that said, God is limited to one place. And I think that's what, a lot of people come to believe, so that we can experience God anywhere through His Spirit. And that's true, but that doesn't negate the idea of, like you were saying, that there are still sacred spaces that we can feel especially close to God.
J.R.:Yeah, and I would say even more so in the ancient world, where if If you were a farmer or something like that, uh, you might have a little village that's within walking distance to, trade and do business and things like that. But there's certainly, we've talked about that when we went to, the Acropolis, we, we, we were saying, what we, we, you know, every, all these, and the Acropolis is a good example because that is for the most part intact, as opposed to a lot of the ancient temples and things like that have mostly been destroyed. But you go to the Acropolis, and me and you have this feeling as we're walking up to it, you kind of put yourself in the shoes of an ancient person and thinking, man, what would somebody who grew up a hundred miles from here, and who never went more than 20 or so miles from their little village.<Yeah.> What would they have thought as they were coming into Athens and they saw this Acropolis complex, and were coming up to that temple? It's got to be overwhelming. It's overwhelming today.<Right.> But even more so, how much more overwhelming would it have been for an ancient person that probably didn't go but a few miles from his home?
David:Right, we talked about how, that's a good point, we talked about how the physicalness of the ascent and, uh, standing in this amazing temple, actually put you in a state of awe, and I think that's the value of sacred space. That's a good way to, that's a good way to put it, actually.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:Part of the value of sacred space is it's a space that automatically puts you in a sense of awe. And look, we can be honest and say God is everywhere, and that's true. But, you know, when I'm mowing the lawn, I'll be honest, I don't have a sense of awe of God, right? Now, God is with me mowing the lawn, but I'm not in that state of awe. Now, I can pray. In fact, a lot of times when I am mowing the lawn, my head's going a hundred miles an hour, and sometimes I'm praying, and you know, God is with me. But it's very different from putting myself physically in a sacred space to experience awe. I guess that's the way I would say it.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's well said.
David:Yeah. Well, and I think one more thing I would point out, too, that's important to understand, is because, and again, I've heard this said where people, you know, will say, man, I feel sorry for the ancients that thought they had to go to the temple to experience God. Well, that's not what they thought, okay? We're trying to expand that idea to say they understood all this. So I just want to finish this section by reading Psalm 139, because this came to mind as we're talking about this whole thing. Psalm 139:7, and this is King David, says,"Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there." Again, that's that idea of the sacred space, right? The heavens versus the depths.<Right.>"If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the seas, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast." And so, that's an example of a psalm to show that, look, King David and the ancients, they understood that if you weren't at the temple, it didn't mean you were out of God's presence.
J.R.:Right. Yeah, they fully understood that.
David:Right. And it's actually a remarkable statement that David actually says, If I go to the depths, you are there. I mean, that's a remarkable statement.<Right.> Because in a lot of that world view, they would be like, No, man, the gods aren't there.
J.R.:They're not in the underworld, right.
David:The wrong kind of gods are there, right?
J.R.:Yeah, that's right.
David:But David says, no, God, I believe even if, you know, even if I go to the depths, even if I'm in the underworld and, again, this is some of the other stuff we'll talk about, because he talks about the pit and Sheol and David said, look, I believe that you would be there with me if I happen to find myself. That's a powerful statement. David fully understood that God was not relegated to the Temple Mount in Zion. But they also understood that there was something special about being on that holy mountain in God's presence at the temple.
J.R.:Right. Right. And to go back to kind of a more contemporary idea, we realize that church, the church building, isn't all that matters. But there is value in it. I mean, there are also people that say, Now listen, I can have church in my living room. And, and to some degree that's true. But you're missing the bigger picture. And, and the more I study the Bible, the more I understand that it's, it's about a tension between two ideas. And yes, God is everywhere. But, best of luck having a spiritual moment in the middle of a club. You know, when, when, when the music's bumping and you know, everybody's taking shots, you know, you see what I'm saying? It's like,<Yeah.> there are areas that, are clearly, uh, yes, God's there, but best of luck being in a spiritual mindset.<Right.> And that's what, that's where I think it's that idea that we can kind of, we kind of want to choose one or the other, or we tend to argue one extreme or the other, and the answer is somewhere in the tension. Yes, God is everywhere, but at the same time, I want to be in that holy spot with a community that we're all focusing on the same thing for a few hours a week. You know, that's where I want to be, and I long to be there. And when you go to the ancient mindset, you can even see more so that, you know, like we said, that there wasn't big anything, big buildings, big temples anywhere. And this is the first time you're seeing a, ancient temple, and it's, you know, 300 feet up in the air, and you're, you're ascending to it, and it inspires you, and it pulls the awe out of you, and you can't help but be in a spiritual place by the time you get to the top of that mountain with the people that you're on this pilgrimage with. So yeah, that makes perfect sense.
David:Yeah, yeah. Well, one more psalm, and we'll kind of try and wrap up this whole idea. Psalm 24, verse 3. Actually, that's something you can read real quick? I don't have that one up yet.
J.R.:Yeah. Psalm 24:1 says,"The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord. For he laid its foundations on the seas, and established it on the rivers. Who may ascend to the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?" And both of those end in question marks. Those are rhetorical questions he's putting out there.
David:Yeah. No, but that's an interesting idea, because it starts with this affirmation that, look, you created everything, right? The whole world is yours.
J.R.:Right, it's all yours.
David:It's all yours. You inhabit it all. And it's the same idea. But then it ends with the question of who can ascend, uh, in my version, who can ascend your holy hill or who can ascend the holy mountain, right? So it has both of those ideas that it all belongs to God, but then it's asking the question, okay, but who was able to ascend and actually experience the closeness of that presence? I think that's what it's really getting at.
J.R.:Yeah, it's also saying, who can ascend God's holy hill and stand in his presence? Who can walk into the presence of God? You think of Moses, you think of the Ten Commandments. When you're in God's presence, you, at the very least, you take your shoes off, because you're standing on holy ground. And on the more extreme side, uh, if anyone approached the Mountain when God was, God's presence was on it, they would die. Don't approach the mountain, right?<Right.> And it's asking that rhetorical question. Who can just walk up God's hill and stand in his perfect and holy presence in their current state of mind. How, how, how am I gonna be able to do that? You know, I don't just walk in the holy a holy of holies.
David:Yeah, yeah, right. So it's very much rhetorical and it's very much saying like who, I think you're right, who's character, who has the, ability to stand in the presence of God. Look, it's not talking about hiking a mountain, right?<Right.> So it's not talking about who has the stamina to climb this huge peak, because we've already established that, you know, Mount Zion's not all that impressive, right?<Right, yeah.> It takes you like five minutes to... It's interesting because going to Israel now, it's not even a mountain. It's almost just the city has been so built up around it, that it's actually hard to see it as a mountain except from one different one perspective.
J.R.:Oh, yeah, it's just a slope.
David:Yeah, it's just a little slope and on one side you can see that, Oh, yeah, there was there was a hill there at one time, but the city's so built up around it. But it's not saying who has the stamina to climb up that mountain. It's saying, who has the right heart to enter God's presence? Let's say it that way, you know.<Yeah.> Well, I think that this is a reference, again, back to that ancient mindset of who was worthy to enter a temple. You know, and that's where you get into these Old Testament, cleansing rituals, right? You had to purify yourself before you actually entered into the temple, and then, as you were saying, there were even spots in the temple you that you couldn't enter into. And we have this picture back on Sinai, and I actually think this is maybe what the psalm is pointing back to, is, you know, God instructs Moses uh, to put a boundary around the mountain that says no one's able to cross, right?<Right.> And there were all these purity rituals of who could actually approach God. So, when the, when the psalmist is saying, who can ascend the holy hill, who can stand in God's presence, I think what it's getting at, the answer being, the ones who have, in fact it actually says, the one who has a clean hands and pure heart in another psalm. So, it's really talking about purity of heart. And again, that's this ancient idea that was held in the wider world of you didn't enter a sacred space without cleansing yourself to some extent.
J.R.:Right. And there was a physical cleansing to mirror what, what, uh, the purpose of cleansing the heart. Not walking in with a deceitful heart.<Right.> Not, not, you know, being pure before God. It's again, it's, it's kind of doing that physical imagery to mirror the spiritual imagery, the spiritual state of mind or state of heart that we're supposed to approach God in.<Right.> That's, that has to do with the idea of holiness.
David:Right, yeah. And again, we saw this, we keep referring to it, but at Delphi, right, there was a sacred spring that you had to bathe in before you started up the holy path, or the sacred way.<Yeah.> And that was not uncommon in those days. You know, the Temple Mount at the time would have been surrounded with, they found several of these large baths that people would go bathe in and cleanse themselves of before they entered the temple area.<Right.> And it wasn't just about not tracking dirt into the temple, right?
J.R.:We spent all day cleaning it up, you know, and here you come walking in with your dusty feet. Come on, man.
David:We just mopped. You're not walking anywhere.
J.R.:Forget it. Hit the bath.
David:Didn't have anything to do with that. It had to do with a physical act that corresponded with, an inward, a purity of heart that you were going through this ritual to say, okay, I'm entering sacred space now.<Right.> And that's what that was about.<Right.> So, it's just another piece of this little puzzle of the Sacred Mountain or the Holy Mountain of, you know, who can ascend the hill of God, and the answer is, well, those who have clean hands and a pure heart. That's why the Psalms say that that way. It's those who have purified themselves that can enter into a sacred space.
J.R.:Right. Yeah, that's right.
David:Well, so we really, I guess to wrap things up, we see this picture of a holy mountain as a hierarchical structure of the world. You know, that we have the holy mountain where God resides. We're navigating our way up and down it. Symbolically, heaven is up. It's the new mountain of God, right? The depths, that's where you don't want to be, even though David said God is there as well.<Right.> So you kind of get this symbol of the ancient mindset of how the world worked, and I think there's a actually a lot of good that we can take from that if we bring that mindset back in, and it begins with just understanding this imagery of the holy mountain or the mountain of God all throughout the Psalms.
J.R.:Yeah, and I think that I think that a lot of what a biblical language it's interesting because some things like the verse we just read talked about clean hands and a pure heart. Well, I don't think any churches say, well, listen, we got to, you better wash your hands before you come to church. You know, and we realize that imagery when it comes to spiritually cleansing ourselves or physically cleansing ourselves. But you're right when it comes to the mountain, I think we've kind of lost that ancient understanding. And so there, therefore it kind of comes across as, well, what's the deal with that? You know, are they just, copying the pagan religions that their gods lived in mountains? And so, Hey, our God lives in an even better mountain. You know, and, and you're just missing that, physical manifestation of a spiritual idea, that we take, like I said, we take for granted when you talk about washing our hands. But it's, it's all throughout scripture in different ways. And I think the, I think you're right. I think that the mountain of God, has a spiritual implication and it's just giving it a physical form so that we can wrap our minds around the spiritual implication.
David:I think, for me, the question it really raises is, is, you know, in modern faith, have we lost the sense of a sacred place? Because we have been so raised with the ideas that God is everywhere, you know, I don't have to go to a temple anymore. All these Old Testament concepts, when we understand them just at a very surface level, you know, there's no such thing as really a holy mountain of God anymore, right? To right to most moderns, but I think for me it raises the question of just have we lost the sense of sacred space? And just speaking personally, I would say I know that I have lost a sense of that and I'm trying to recapture it. But I think it also has a lot of implications, you know, for, for churches as well. Like, what does it mean to have, okay, so here's something I'll throw out to you. What does it mean for a church to really hold this idea that this is a sacred space? How do you think a church wrestles with that?
J.R.:Well, when you were talking a second ago, I was sitting there thinking that a lot of it, I mean, just this is much more on the kind of just the world we live in today, practical. I remember the first time I went to Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. I came up from Tallahassee, came to Jackson, Tennessee and a friend of mine took me to Bellevue Church in Memphis. And it was a massive church. And I know you've probably been to Thomas Road Baptist Church several times. You went to school up there. And that's an, that's another massive church. And I remember in the nineties walking to these churches and thinking, Oh my gosh, look at this place. It is absolutely huge. And, they're still big churches. But I'm, I'm in Jackson, Tennessee. I'm in a town of about 70,000 people. And we have, couple, two or three really, really large churches. And we had said that we've talked about before that in the nineties, there was kind of this explosion of what they call the megachurches. And a town the size of mine, which is not a big town, has a megachurch or two, uh, or what would be called a megachurch. And so it's just commonplace. And so some of it is just, that juxtaposition of the ancient world coming from a small village, coming to this huge temple that you've never seen anything like it. And somewhat, it's sort of like me coming from my hometown and seeing Bellevue Baptist Church. I'd never seen anything like that. But now, it's just, you see churches like that all over the place. And so, since it's so commonplace, how do you maintain that idea of holiness? And again, I guess I kind of, I kind of went down the road of the size of the building, but there is something about the size of the building that, pulls the awe out of you. That makes you just kind of stand there with your mouth open. How do we go on with that sense of awe and that sense of spiritual awe that the buildings used to capture, but that are so commonplace anymore?
David:Yeah, well, certainly the size of a building in the ancient world, it mattered. The largest temple in the ancient world was the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.<Right.> It was absolutely massive, you know, and that added to the sense of awe. Uh, if you were going there to worship Artemis, you would, in fact, you would go there and you go, yeah, surely this goddess is just all powerful. I mean, look at the size of the temple, right?
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. She's got my vote.
David:Yeah. But so I think you're right that it's not so much the scale anymore of the structure because there are a lot bigger structures around. I go back to this idea of the imagery. Again, we saw this so many times on our trip to Greece. Of the imagery in a temple, right?<Right.> Um, man, just covered in icons and paintings and everything represented something.
J.R.:Right, every square inch is utilized.
David:Every square inch, yeah, every square inch represented something. Every pillar represented a tree or one of the four Gospels. So, I mean, literally, I think that's an extreme version, but, you know, that was sacred space. But, and they didn't have to do with the size of the structure, right? Because the one I'm thinking of in particular wasn't even that big. So I think, I don't know, I think it would be interesting for churches to think through, and certainly in more traditional in more liturgical churches, they already have this idea of the stained glass windows, of the imagery all around. But, I'm thinking of more, I don't know, we talked earlier, I know there's churches that meet in like high school gyms. I've been a part of churches that met in community theaters. And, while it's a challenge, yeah, while it's a challenge, it's, you know, it'd be interesting to think through how do you bring back, art, sacred imagery? Can you, can you make, just for that day that you meet there, can you make certain things represent something holy and sacred to where people actually get this sense of awe when they walk into something maybe as common as a movie theater. Now that's a challenge, but I think it'd be an interesting and creative challenge for people to tackle.
J.R.:Yeah, that's, that's clearly the challenge and not to downplay, these upstart churches that meet in these, these types of spaces. It really is, I think, worth thinking about. Worth, wrestling with that idea of tension again. That, in one sense, I agree, it doesn't matter where we meet as long as we can meet in someone's living room and, and, you know, you got six or seven people there, man, you got church. And so there is that reality, but at the same time, you kind of do want this sacred space. You want that awe inspiration when you walk into a holy space. And I think, I think that's something that we've kind of gotten away with or gotten away from, in the, in the modern church, maybe I'll say the modern southern church. You know, sort of just, Hey man, throw your jeans on and come on, come as you are type thing. There's a space for that, and there's a need for that, but at the same time, there also needs to be that idea of inspiring holiness when you walk in the doors. And I think that, I think we've gotten away from that. And again, I realize that we can run down to that other extreme, and that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm saying that we hold that, those two ideas in tension, about God is every place. Where two or three are gathered, here, you know, I'll be in the midst of you. And in the same time, let's try to create a holy space that inspires awe to all who walk in the doors.
David:I think that's a good way to put it. And it's definitely a tension and a challenge, because I think of churches I've been a part of in the past, and, you know, it is a trade off, almost, of making a space more acceptable to more people. But then you see some of the sacredness and the holiness of that space maybe getting lost. So, it's a tension. It's a tough, it's a tough tightrope to walk, you know.
J.R.:Yeah, and it's not a one size fits all.<No.> I mean, I've heard, you've heard people say, I walked into this church and it was so, what, gaudy and over the top that I just didn't feel comfortable there. You know, and I understand that, idea also. So it's, it's, yeah, it's not, it's not a one size fits all, but it is, it is, I do think it's, we would do ourselves a service by wrestling with that tension and really struggling with that. And as opposed to just saying, no, I'm in, I'm in this camp. And so here's what we're going to do, you know?
David:Yeah. And I guess to, uh, to wrap things up, at least for me, I would say. Look, it's not about just the Church, too. It, it, some of the larger concepts that we've talked about is, you know, where is God's presence the strongest? What does it mean to ascend God's holy hill? That goes back to our episode on The Ascent. Where is God's presence the strongest? Well, God's presence is the strongest in a space that's kept holy. And, you know, certainly when it comes to the individual, I don't think it's a stretch to say, look, the more holy and pure I can keep myself, I will feel God's presence stronger. And I've used this example before, but you know, every fall I go to a week in the cabin. And it's up in the mountains, so it's perfect setting, you know, the mountain of God. But I make a concerted effort to make sure that that place is sacred space.<Yeah.> And, you know, so, I, I say that just to say, look, we're not just talking about church buildings, we're talking about, you know, wherever you have a retreat. Maybe it's a corner of your house, but I know my mindset becomes focused and I try to make that cabin a sacred space. I don't know what happened the week before in that cabin, but, you know, it's like, for that week, it's, it becomes a sacred space. And, you know, I, I have my little rituals uh, that I do to remind me of that. One of the first things I do is I walk the road up to the top of the hill and actually that's kind of where the idea of some of this came from is because one of the Psalms that, always comes to mind is, lead me to your holy hill. There's a Psalm that says that, guide me and lead me to your holy hill and to your presence. And that's always the way I start out that retreat. And so, you know, there's things that we can do in our home, in our personal retreats, in our devotions, you know, wherever, we're, we're talking about just, you know, things beyond the church as well.
J.R.:Right. Yeah. No, I think, I think that's exactly right. That we need to, we can create these spaces in our own, home sometimes.<Mm hmm.> But it's a matter of, of taking the time and effort to create the space. And, and...
David:And... Create the space and actually believing that there's something real about the sacred space. And I guess that's where I would wrap it up to say, tying it back to the ancient mindset. Not to interrupt you, but just to piggyback on what you just said.
J.R.:No, that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. Taking the effort to create that sacred space, because when you do take that, when you do take that effort, it actually does become, it actually does change the space. You know, kind of like what you were saying about the cabin. Who knows what happened the week before? You know, but when I'm there, this is the effort I'm making and, and I'm not going up there bringing my speaker set up and I'm not blaring music that we're going to try to keep the, try to keep this a quiet, sacred space and it become in the process, it becomes holy.
David:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right.
J.R.:Yeah. I like that. And, and I do like the, just the idea that as we see the, the mountain and the hill all throughout the Bible to keep that image in mind. That it's the attempt to find that sacred space and to approach it. And it's not going to be easy. There's going to be an ascent. We've talked about that. But that's, that's the way that should be seen when you see that all through the Bible. Because that's the idea that's always trying to be captured here.
David:Right, right. Well, and this is just the first of the images that we're going to talk about in Psalms, the Holy Mountain, the Mountain of God. Next week, we're going to talk about, this should be interesting, we're going to talk about ancient trash talk.
J.R.:Ah, there we go.
David:The whole idea is there's a lot more trash talking going on in the Psalms than a lot of people realize, too.
J.R.:Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, we're in a, meme world, and so we, yeah, we should, we should jump right into that.<Yeah.> That'll be fun.
David:Yeah, we can have some fun with that one.
J.R.:Yeah, that's all right. I'm looking forward to it. That sounds good.
David:Cool. Well, thanks everyone for listening to this episode of the Navigating an Ancient Faith podcast. You can check out our website navigatinganancientfaith.com. You can also check out our Facebook group, Navigating an Ancient Faith. There's a theme going on here, but we're just trying to connect people. If you have thoughts, comments, we'd love to hear from you as well. And the other thing I'll say too is, if you're enjoying this podcast, give us, give us a like, a thumbs up, uh, leave a comment, a rating. All that stuff helps on making a podcast like this discoverable.
J.R.:Yeah. It makes it a lot more discoverable. You, other people, let, let other people stumble across this. That's what we're trying to kind of get this word out.
David:Yeah. It's one of the things behind the scenes that once you do it, you go, oh, yeah, that's why every podcaster like begs for a rating or a review or something, because
J.R.:We've been doing this long enough that we're thinking, yeah, it really does matter.
David:It really does. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. We will talk to you next episode.
J.R.:We'll see y'all.
