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Daniel Vis

The Mount Called Olivet

Father in Heaven, we have a lot of things coming up.

You know we trust that You've been guiding our thoughts and directing us as we put these plans and goals and dreams and this vision together.

But Lord, we recognize that we can do nothing without Your Holy Spirit empowering us.

So I just want to plead with you this morning as we look into Your Word that You would impress upon our hearts once again, and maybe in a fresh and new way, our need for the Holy Spirit, Our need for You to be working in our life.

Please, bless our time together, I pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.

So, if you do a study on the Mount of Olives, that's my topic this morning, in the Bible, you'll find that this was a place that Jesus liked to go.

Now, I did not actually plan this sermon.

So, it may seem like a completely unrelated topic.

But I want to look at this place, the Mount of Olives, for just a minute.

For example, when Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, and they were all saying hosanna and stuff, do you know where He was coming from?

The Bible says He was coming from the Mount of Olives.

When Jesus was in the temple and He was teaching, Where did He go at the end of the day when His teaching was over?

The Bible says He went back to the Mount of Olives.

You remember when Jesus sent the 2 disciples to go in and get everything ready for the Passover service?

He said go in and follow the guy with the pitcher and all that.

He was at the Mount of Olives with His disciples.

Where did they go after they had the Lord's Supper?

The Bible says they sang a hymn and they went to the Mount of Olives.

That's where the Garden of Gethsemane was.

In fact, there's another verse that says this was a place where he was wont to go.

In other words, this was common whenever he was in Jerusalem.

He was typically somewhere over there on the Mount of Olives.

There's about a dozen references to the Mount of Olives.

Most of them during that last week of his life there in Jerusalem.

And they're all translated as Mount of Olives.

Now if you have your Bible, turn to Acts 1.

I don't know why these little things sort of stand out to me sometimes, but in Acts 1, starting in verse 12, our Scripture reading, I want you to notice it words it just a little bit different.

Now maybe your translation is not the same as mine, but in the King James, it does not say the Mount of Olives.

It says, then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey.

Now keep your finger here, because we're going to look at this passage in more detail as we continue along.

But just notice, every other place, at least in the King James Bible, it refers to it in the New Testament as the Mount of Olives, but this 1 place, it says Mount Olivet.

And I was actually kind of just wondering about that.

I wasn't sure if it was the same mountain or not.

Maybe it's a completely different mountain.

But from all the commentaries that I could read, it sounds like it's exactly the same place.

I looked in the Greek to think, well, maybe it just translated it different.

In all the other places it uses a word that means olive tree, like in the singular, but in this word the Bible says the plural, like a grove of olive trees or like an orchard of olive trees.

So it's actually a different word in the Greek.

I mean, it's almost the same, like 1 or 2 letters different, like the amount of olive tree versus amount of olive trees.

I mean, it's almost the same, but just, and it's the only place in the Bible where you have this, it's the only place where you see this Greek word.

Why in the world does it use a different word here?

Now I get into the weeds sometimes, just because I'm curious about things.

I noticed in the New King James Version, for example, it seems to kind of miss out on this distinction.

In some places it uses Olivet, in some places it uses the Mount of Olives, but it completely ignores the underlying Greek.

In the King James, every place that says Mount of Olives, it's using 1 word.

And this 1 place where it says Olivet, it's using a different word.

So I thought that was kind of curious Now now when I get caught up in these little details, I realize that sometimes there's absolutely no significance to it at all But sometimes you start tracking these things down and all of a sudden something opens up Have you ever had that happen?

Like just some little detail, like why in the world does it say Olivet instead of olives, or olive tree?

So first thing I did is I pulled it up on my Bible computer program, and I typed in the word Olivet, because I wanted to say, is it the same thing as the Mount of Olives?

And you know there's only actually 1 other place in the whole Bible where the word Olivet is used.

The other place is in the Old Testament of all places, in the book of 2 Samuel.

I'll show you the verse in just a minute.

There's actually 2 places where the Mount of Olives are referenced in the Old Testament.

1 of them, it translates it in my Bible as Mount of Olives.

And in this place, it translates it as Olivet.

But in the Hebrew, it's exactly the same word.

So I don't know the reason for that, why they made that choice.

I'm going to get to my point in a minute.

The long and short of it is when I pulled this up in my computer, I was just researching this word, 2 verses pop up.

2 Samuel 15, verse 30, and Acts 1, verse 12.

Those are the only 2 places in the entire Bible where the word alabet in my translation is found.

And here's the thing that was really interesting when I looked at those 2 verses, it seemed like there is some kind of link or connection between those 2 verses.

There are some interesting parallels and contrasts between these 2 verses.

I want to look at this passage just a little bit.

If you remember the story, or just kind of skim over it, this is where Jesus ascended to heaven.

The disciples were all gathered around Jesus.

They're all climbing up the Mount of Olives, or Olivet, whatever you want to call it.

And they're all gathered up at the top of the mountain, and they're meeting with Jesus.

This is their last meeting with Jesus before He ascends to heaven.

I can only imagine what they were feeling, what they were thinking, what was going on in their minds.

He's giving them the Great Commission, repeating this over and over in different languages, different ways of putting it.

And then after He finally gives them this instruction, answers a couple questions, then all of a sudden they just see Him start lifting up off the ground, going up into a cloud.

And that cloud, we know, was actually a cloud of angels.

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The Mount Called Olivet

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