The Place

Last week I told you the whole point of this series is that it should provoke us to worship, to wonder and worship at what God did at the cross.

And last week we talked about the people that he brought there, that he brought the more secular-minded emphasized in government for hope.

And then he brought the religious people, the more conservatively minded, you know, heritage religious individuals who look at who look at religious obedience as the way to change their lives and change culture.

And we discussed how that both those individuals came to the cross.

Jesus, God brought them there to the cross, and they failed miserably in that they crucified the Lord of glory.

It reveals there in that spot that this is no matter where you come from, on which side of the spectrum that you are.

No matter how much you try or how good that you do, the reality is inside of us is the seed of idolatry that would kill God given the chance.

And that's what we learned last week from Luke chapter 22 as well as Acts chapter 4.

Luke 22 · chapter mention Acts 4 · chapter mention

Now, this morning I want to read to you this passage that we're really, we're really, I mean, dissecting and looking at in deep detail because we know this is the focal point of history.

This is the focal point of all of Scripture.

Luke summarizes what is happening there at Gagotha.

And when they, we know who they were, the Jews, religious people, gospelist religion, and the secular Roman individuals who thought they could rule and change the world through government, when they came to the place, and we're going to talk about that today, to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on the right hand and one on the left.

It all started shortly after the flood when Noah got off the ark.

He had three sons, and those three sons were divided up between the three major continents around them.

Some of them went to the area of Europe, and others went to the area of Asia, and others went to the area of Africa.

But many of them, too many of them, as they grew and as they populated the earth, stayed in one single spot.

That spot became known as Babel.

And those individuals decided they were going to build a tower to the Lord.

Now we we don't know exactly what they meant, but we know the end result was this object that lifted them up towards heaven.

They were making their way to heaven, they were building their way to God.

We've talked about this before.

The truth is the major problem at Babel is that we don't build our way to God.

When we meet him, we don't meet him on our terms through our effort.

We meet him through his terms, on his effort.

So these individuals thought they were going to exalt themselves to the most high place in an effort to fulfill the promise of the serpent in the garden that they could be like God.

God, of course, was not oblivious to this.

He came down, decided they didn't have the right work permit, and he dispensed them in a process of breaking apart their languages.

And so this is this is where the world was introduced to fragmentation because their languages were divided and they were separated now to go their own way.

Now that's an important background to this story because whenever we open up Acts chapter 2, what we see is the opposite of that.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

After the resurrection, Jesus has ascended to heaven.

The disciples come back to the upper room, and on the day of Pentecost, they're all gathered together whenever something powerful happens, something that has not, I believe, ever been repeated.

Cloven tongues of fire hung over them, and they began to speak.

And when they spoke, everyone could hear them in their own language.

Now that's not just some parlor trick that God was performing for them to get the attention of the watching city around them.

It was an undoing of Babel.

It was God through the gospel, through the power of the Spirit, undoing what happened there in that place where the languages were split.

That's the whole point there.

And it happened right there in that spot.

In 1580, there was a prominent map that was drawn and later converted into mosaic, and you can see it in several spots around Israel.

Those of you who just came back from Israel, you probably saw it as you descended the steps of the Jerusalem Museum on the southwest side of the temple complex.

That second set of steps, you turn, you look, and there's this huge mosaic of a three-leaf clover.

And the bottom leaf is labeled Africa.

The top leaf is labeled, top left leaf from your angle is labeled Europe, and the top right leaf is labeled Asia.

And right in the middle is a little score of the flower, and it's labeled, it's labeled Israel.

And right in the middle of Israel is Jerusalem.

Now, this was the mindset of Israel.

It was the central location of where God chose to operate his plan of redemption.

And it was the best place on the planet for God to start his work.

Because right there at the edge of the Levant, the Fertile Crescent, any bit of trade that occurred between Asia and Africa, and Africa and Europe and Europe and Asia would flow right through that Levant.

There were major highways, and from this spot, the message could be carried out to the world.

It was an optimal location.

And a location that God had picked from the early days of his work with creation.

So what I want to do over the next few minutes is I want to cover with you very quickly four stories that happened here in this spot, the place called the skull.

Now, when you go there today, uh where we believe, uh many of us believe, where the location of the crucifixion occurred, it is the rock face of a quarry where stones were cut out to create the first temple.

And over the course of time, the rains eroded that rock face so that it looks very much like a skull.

If you go there today, it it sits over top of a bus station for the Muslim quarter.

Kind of loses its romance at that point.

But it's there, it's very clear what it was.

And in that location, we believe that the Son of God was nailed to a cross and lifted way up for everyone to see on the major highway that comes by there.

And there, Luke tells us, he was crucified.

Now, way back in the book of Genesis, we read the first occurrence, the first major occurrence of what happened there in that spot.

It happened with Abraham.

Abraham, of course, waited many years on a son impatiently, not perfectly, but eventually God fulfilled his promise in the just the right time.

And whenever Abraham received his son, you know, he was precious.

Isaac was precious through him.

All of Abraham's hopes rested in Isaac.

That's why, whenever God comes to Abraham and says, Hey, I got a task for you, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to take your son and then to kind of dig the blade into his heart, your only son, and take him to a place on a high mountain that I will show you and there sacrifice him to me.

How many of you think that's weird?

Like that just does not seem in keeping with anything that God would ever tell someone to do.

Why would he do this?

God did this because this was the way people worshiped in that day.

Through uh demonic and evil manipulation, individuals were convinced that to appease the God, they would have to take their firstborn and to sacrifice him or her to the deity.

And so God is essentially saying to Abraham, Abraham, I want you to do this.

I want you to do what the pagans would do.

You go and you take him to the place that I will show you.

Literally, in the Hebrew, the phrase is Ma Rah.

It's where we get the name for the mountain where Jerusalem is Moriah.

That's where God was sending him to.

Now you know the story.

Abraham takes Isaac and they go to the mountain.

And on the way, Isa on the way up, Isaac, who's probably a young man at this point, looks at his father and says, Hey, okay, uh, I just did a checklist and we got the flint and we got the wood, we're good to go.

We forgot the sacrifice.

Where's the sacrifice?

And Abraham's statement was probably more telling than he knew.

God will provide for himself a sacrifice.

Now that didn't stop Abraham whenever he arrived at the top of Moriah at a threshing floor at the pinnacle of this mountain, binding Isaac to the stone there.

That must have been an awkward conversation, do you think?

Like when I get to heaven, I want to ask Isaac, hey, tell me, tell me how that went.

How did that conversation go?

He yielded himself to it, obviously, and Abraham bound him there, and he pulled out the blade and he lifted it up and he was about to do the deal.

Now, Hebrews tells us he was so convinced in the power of God that he knew even if he had slit Isaac's throat and bled him out there on that altar, that God was powerful enough to bring him back.

And since God had promised through Isaac, shall all the nations of the world be blessed, Abraham knew that even if he died, he would live again.

As that blade was extended, an angel yelled out and said, Stop, don't harm the boy.

Now I know it's been proven that you will not hold withhold anything from me.

And Abraham looked up, and in the distance he saw a ram caught in the thicket.

And indeed, God did provide for himself a ram.

Now, of course, we know in that story that from the story we see the parallels that Abraham was called to sacrifice his own son.

God stayed his hand, and yet, whenever Jesus prayed, Father, all things are possible for you.

Remember that thing you did with Abraham and Isaac?

You remember that?

Like you could do anything.

Let this cup pass for me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.

And when it came time for the death blow to be delivered, God did not stay his hand.

His own son was sacrificed, his own essence was sacrificed for you and for me.

That happened right here in the spot.

Now, the next occurrence that we see, and a lot of things happen in the Jebusite city that was eventually raised there on Mount Moriah, but ultimately that became the target for a man named David who said, That's going to be the place where I build my capital.

My palace is going to be there.

And he looked up at the Jebusite city and said, This is going to be it.

And eventually David made good and he built his city, his capital city there on the top of Mount, on the slopes of Mount Moriah.

But at the top, there was still that threshing floor.

It belonged to a man named Arona.

Now, David, of course, was just like you and I.

He's a prideful individual, and he wants to know that he's doing good in life, and occasionally to know that he's doing well in life.

Like us, we have to stop and take inventory.

How much money do we have in the bank?

How much acreage do we own?

How much influence do we have?

And of course, you know the danger of doing such a thing can cause you to be prideful, could cause you to start leaning on your own resources more than trusting God.

That's a problem.

And so God had told David and the kings, don't number the people.

You don't need to know how many people are with you.

You don't need to know how much money you have.

You don't, and why?

Because you don't need to be prideful.

But David was tempted, and one morning he woke up and he says, I just want a rough count.

Just an estimate.

And so he begins to number the people.

And after he had numbered the people, his heart was convicted because he realized what he had done, and he prays to the Lord for forgiveness.

And how many of you know that you can pray for forgiveness?

And forgiveness, forgiveness does a lot.

It reunites you with the Father, but it doesn't rem always remove the consequences of sin.

Are you with me?

Many things in my life I've been forgiven for.

And I am living in the echo of the consequences of those sins by the grace of God.

So David was approached by Gad, who was his prophet, his preacher.

And Gad came to him and said, David, you've sinned here.

Here's what needs to happen.

You're going to have to make a choice.

God's going to give you an opportunity to choose what kind of punishment you receive.

I've never gotten that invitation from God.

But David got it, and Gad comes to David and says, Okay, here's your options.

You can have three years of drought.

You can have three months running from your enemies.

Or you can have three days of pestilence.

Now, this was all David's fault.

And if David was a good king, David would have said, You know what, this is all my fault.

Shouldn't involve the people with this.

Just give me the three months of running from my enemies, and that's just going to be the best thing to do.

But David doesn't do that.

David instead says, It's better, because that should be the option he should choose, but David says instead to Gad, it's better to be turned over to the hand of the Lord than to be turned over to the hands of my enemies.

I'll take the three days of pestilence.

And he condemns thousands of people to pain, suffering, and death.

The very next day, when he wakes up after this punishment's been issued, David cries out to the Lord and pleads for mercy and forgiveness.

And the and the Lord relents.

David looks up from his city on the slopes of Mount Moriah up to the top of the mountain, there at that threshing floor that belonged to Arona, and he sees an angel of the Lord.

And he goes up and his heart's laid.

And depending on how you read the text, it makes it very clear that the angel encourages him to take the threshing floor and to buy it, to prepare a place for the Lord there.

And so David goes to Arona and he says, Hey, listen, I want this.

I want to buy it and give it to the Lord.

And Arona says, Hey, you're the king, man.

You just take it.

I'll give it to you, and as well as the animals to sacrifice and whatever else you want.

And David responds to Arona, I can't do that.

I've got to give you something here because I cannot sacrifice to the Lord, I cannot sacrifice to the Lord offerings that cost me nothing.

Now here we see the gospel again very clearly, that when it came time for Jesus to die, he didn't do the David thing where he said, Hey, I'm just gonna let everyone else bear a little bit of this, because I don't want to be in the hands of my enemies.

Jesus did not say that.

Jesus surrendered himself fully to the hand of the enemy, not for something he had done, but for something that I had done.

And it's not lost on me as I was reading this that the three years, the three months, and ultimately the three days may have a meaning as well, because how long was the Savior in the grave?

And after those three days, he was he was raised up, having made a sacrifice that cost him greatly.

He did not offer to the Lord sacrifices that cost him nothing.

He offered to the Lord instead sacrifices that cost him everything in his earthly body.

The third major image that comes to us from this spot, we've got the image of Abraham, we've got the image of David, and then the third major image is the image that occurs on the day the temple was completed under the hands of David's son Solomon.

Everything was finished.

It was the feast of Sukkot, the feast of tabernacles, and the hills would have been would have been uh lined with beautifully white, bleached tents and people wearing white garments all around.

And and it's it's all part now Sukkot was was used as a as a day to dedicate this incredibly beautiful structure.

In a day where most people lived in thatch huts to build a mansion like this would have been something to behold.

Everyone wanted to see it.

And everyone wanted to see it work because this was the place where God said, You go, I'm gonna put my name there, and this is gonna be a place that I will meet with you, and your sins will be atoned for in this place.

And so they're bringing in the furniture, they bring in the lampstands and the altars, and the last thing they bring in was this Ark of the Covenant on staves.

20 cubic foot long.

Staves were essentially essentially poles that kept people away from the Ark of the Covenant because the Ark of the Covenant contained the holy presence of God, and nobody could get near that.

The staves were designed to keep the priest at arm's length away from God.

Man, that's how religion works, right?

Religion works by God saying, You need to get to me, but I'm gonna put a barrier up so that you stay constantly arm's length away from me.

That's religion.

But the God that you and I serve, the true God, is a God who says, Look, I you got a sin problem and we got to deal with that, and it's caused a breach between me and you, but I still so desperately want you close to me.

That's the beauty of those staves.

Whenever they brought that Ark of the Covenant in, they placed it in the room.

The room was also 20 cubic foot deep.

So the staves were 20 cubic foot long, and the foundation of the temple was 20 cubic foot deep.

Now, if you're an architect, you can already see the problem with this.

The problem is that you cannot fit a 20-foot-long pole inside of a room where the foundation's 20 cubic foot, because you got to account for the walls.

And these block walls probably would have been a foot thick, which means, and scripture tells us this, that when they brought the ark in and they laid it in its place, those poles apparently rested on the back side of the holiest of holies, where nobody could go except for once a year and only the high priest to make atonement for the sins of the people.

And there was a curtain that separated the holiest of holies.

And whenever the poles reached that curtain, the curtains kind of jutted out a little bit, or maybe the poles stuck out through the curtains.

It was a major design faux pas.

I mean, it was a huge problem.

Who was the one who caused the problem?

Who was the one who gave the blueprint for the temple?

Well, it was God Himself.

Does God make mistakes?

No, he doesn't make mistakes.

Which means it was intentional for those poles to stick out of the holiest of holies where men could not go.

It was intentional for those two poles, like the hands of a loving father, reaching out as far as he can for a child.

It was intentional for God's presence, that thing that connected to God's presence, to reach out into the place where sacrifices were made every single day.

Now, after the temple was set up and the people praised the Lord, the presence of the Lord came down and filled the temple to such a thickness so that they could not minister by reason of the cloud.

All the worship, all the plans that they they had made had to stop.

And the people just had to step back and let God be God and worship Him.

I'd be okay with that.

If we came in one morning and the Spirit of God had set down on this place so much that whatever I had prepared for this week just had to be scuttled.

And all we could do is just sit in the presence and worship this beautiful Savior who died for you and I, the one who stuck his hands out.

Whenever Solomon sees this, he turns and he begins to pray this prayer of dedication, you recall it.

But most of us we remember the one about, oh, if my people who are called by my name, great portion of the prayer.

But we often forget the portion about the sojourner and the foreigner, Solomon says, who comes to this land when the people come.

Come from all over the world, as we know they're going to do, and they come from all over the world, and they turn towards this place and they pray, Lord, hear their prayer, so that the worlds may know there is no God like you.

The gospel connection is quite clear, isn't it?

It's right here in this place where a loving Savior, a loving God, extended his hands through the veil, not by accident, not by happenstance.

It was an intentional design element for him to reach people who could not reach him.

And there in that place to call, to pray for the coming of the nations to this place and the recognition of all the world that what happened at Babel was being undone.

All of that took place right there on that threshing floor.

Just a few hundred feet north of that threshing floor is a place called the Antonio Fortress.

The Antonio Fortress was the uh official offices and residence of a man named Pontius Pilate.

Pontius Pilate, of course, was the governor who brought Jesus in and said, I don't get what the beef is with this guy.

But if you want him killed, kill him.

And wash my hands of it.

And he condemned Jesus to be scourged, beaten, and then crucified.

And led just a few hundred feet more to a spot just a little bit further north.

In my mind, I kind of picture it would have been it would have been a distance that Abraham could have easily seen.

A ram caught in the thicket.

As he sat there with that knife lifted up, prepared to sacrifice his own son at the command of a God who would one day sacrifice his own son up in that thicket.

This place was intentionally chosen by God.

It was intentionally chosen because it was an optimal spot for God to get this message out.

Like he wanted, he wanted the families in South Africa to hear the message.

He wanted the families in the area that we call North Korea to hear the message.

He wanted the father and the mother who are farming away on the northern shores of Britannia to hear the message.

He wanted the most people possible who responded to the light that they had been given to hear the story of the one who was the way, the truth, and the life.

It was the optimal place.

But it was also the place in the sovereign will of God where he decided to show grace and mercy.

With Abraham, he showed mercy and grace to a family.

With David, he showed mercy and grace to a city.

With Solomon's prayer, he showed mercy and grace to a nation.

And with Jesus Christ, he showed mercy and grace to all.

Which means we're called to love one another.

And there's nothing that we can do that even scratches the surface for what he has intentionally done for us there in that place that he has picked to meet with you and I.

If you're here and you're not a follower of Christ, can I just tell you, can I just introduce you to the God whose primary purpose in building is to create a space where he meets with you?

It was the purpose of the garden was to create a place where he can meet with his people.

The purpose for the ark was to create a place where he can protect his people.

The purpose for the tabernacle was a place where his people could, even though they were on the move, they could worship him.

The same purpose for both temples and the purpose for the cross.

The purpose for the construction of the cross was to create a place where he can meet with you if you have not trusted Christ fully for the work that you know you cannot do, to throw your hands up and say, I tried.

I can't do it.

I can't change me.

I can't.

I've turned over every new leaf and even all the New Year's resolutions for 2026.

Here we are, just a few months in, and they are all in a pile of rubbish at my feet.

There's no hope in any of that.

There is hope in Jesus who says, you can't do it.

That's the point.

You can't be your own God.

All you can do is to meet me at the place called the skull, where the Son of God gave his life for you and for me.