"They
that trust in the Lord
Are as mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abideth for
ever.
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem,
So the Lord is round about his people,
From this time forth and for evermore." Psalm
125:1-2
Psalms 120
to 134 form a little volume of their own, called the
Psalms or Songs of Ascent. They tell of the climb up out
of the deep, dark valley on to the sunny heights, which
is where the Lord always desires His people to be.
Psalm 84 speaks of passing through the valley of weeping,
but in that connection we ought to underline the two
words "passing through", for this valley is
never meant to be the dwelling place of the people of God
but only a passage through which they pass. Zion, the
mountain home, is where God wants His people to abide. It
is surely instructive to note that the Lord established
periodic ascents as an ordinance in Israel; all their
males had to go up to Jerusalem three times in every
year. God meant these going-up ordinances to be
governmental in nature; that is, the people of Israel
were not to be governed by the plains or valleys, but to
be a people of the mountains. They might have to spend
time, perhaps much time, down below but their normal life
was continually interrupted by the command to go up.
Their life, their real life, was up in the high places.
If we could have joined their caravans as three times a
year they made ready and got on the march, leaving the
valleys and the plains and going on the upward way to
Jerusalem, we would have found that these journeys had a
tremendous influence on the life of the people. These
songs, for instance, became songs for all time; they were
provided for the ascents of those particular occasions,
but they were not reserved for the three times a year,
becoming the perpetual songs of Israel in which we
ourselves find much of abiding value. This is because the
Lord's mind for His people is that they should not abide
in the deep and shadowy places, though from time to time
they may have to pass through the valleys, but that they
should be a people of the heights, with their lives
governed by that which is above and not by what is below.
I have been very much impressed with the large place
which mountains had in the life and ministry of the Lord
Jesus, as may be verified in Matthew's Gospel, which
begins in chapter 5 with the Mount of Instruction and
finishes in chapter 28 with the Mount of Commission. It
can be noted that all through the Gospel the peak events
were associated with mountains, as though these found an
answer, a response, in the very heart and nature of our
Lord. Is it not true that Jesus came down and passed
through this valley of weeping in order to meet us and
lift us up out of it?
His whole life, in every aspect and activity of praying,
teaching and working, was a life on a rising plane, a
lifting, returning move to heaven which would take back
with Him as many others as possible. There was nothing in
the low level of this world's ways to give Him any
pleasure, so it is not surprising that He loved the
mountain heights. The very nature and spirit of the Lord
Jesus was a complete contradiction of the natural course
of human movement which is steadily slipping lower and
lower. The Lord Jesus is in direct contrast to this; the
whole effect and influence of His presence anywhere being
to lift upwards. He only came by way of this valley of
tears to lift us up out of it.
ASCENDANCY
Mountains
suggest and represent elevation, ascendancy - "I
will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains". To take
our eyes off what is here - self, circumstances and the
rest - and to set them on the One who is the Lord over
all, high and lifted up on the throne, is itself an
elevating experience. "Looking off unto Jesus"
is the one thing which will bring us up out of the valley
of despair, for where our vision rests affects the course
of our lives. It is in every sense an uplifting
experience to be joined to the Lord in heaven; it is
morally elevating and spiritually emancipating.
Perhaps what most of us need is a higher level of life.
We are too small. Our valley is a hemmed-in place, it is
narrow and limiting. We must get on to the mountains to
find enlargement, with a sense of being liberated from
the littlenesses of life, freed from its smallness and
pettiness. If this is true naturally, it helps to
interpret a spiritual truth, reminding us that God has
"raised us up together with Christ".
Individually and collectively in the Church, a very great
deal of the trouble, weakness and even paralysis which we
suffer is due to our failure to maintain our true
position in the heavenlies in Christ. If we could get up
higher, move on to higher ground and leave behind the
things which belong to the shadows and miasmas, we should
find ourselves living in the good of the mighty will of
God in us.
SECURITY
Then, as
the psalmist indicates, it is not only ascendancy which
comes from the mountains but also security. "As the
mountains are round about Jerusalem, so is the Lord round
about His people...". The heights are the places for
strongholds, for refuges. And our strength, our safety is
to get away from the low things, to leave behind what is
mean and contemptible, and to get up into fellowship with
the Lord on high. On the low levels we become the
playthings of bad influences and cross currents - there
are always evil powers which are at work down there in
the dark. We will find deliverance and security by rising
on to higher ground.
The devil and the evil forces are tremendously concerned
with getting us down and holding us down, so that they
can harass and play havoc with our spiritual lives.
Down... down... that is the drive and direction of the
evil one, who plans to get us down and keep us down in
the place where he has the strength. Our refuge is not to
fight on that low ground, but to flee to the heights, to
escape to the Lord in the secret place of the most High.
I think that the Lord Jesus did just this. At the time
when He was aware of all the pressure and down-drag of
earthly conditions and disappointments even with His own
disciples, He said: Let Me go away for a while and go
into the mountains to My Father. It was thus that He was
able to return marvellously fortified, and we can do the
same, finding our way of escape by fellowship with God in
the heights.
VISION
There is a
further point about mountains, a fairly obvious one, and
that is that they are places of vision, places where one
can see the far distances. At the end of the Bible we are
taken to an exceeding great and high mountain and shown
the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, so that the last scene
in the Bible is a mountain scene, and the mountain is
truly one of vision, showing the Church in the full
expression of its heavenly glory. Surely it is of supreme
importance that God's people should have their vision
enlarged. Our vision is too small, our purpose in life is
too small; our conception of our salvation is often too
small. We tend to narrow our thoughts so much that it is
important for us to ascend into the Mount of Vision, for
the loss of vision always brings about a falling to
pieces. Those Christians who have no great sense of God's
purposes and of His ability to reach His end and fulfil
His intentions will find themselves at the mercy of the
doubts and fears which defeat men down here on this
earth.
GRAVITATION
UPWARD
The reader
may agree with all that has been said and yet still be
puzzled as to how such elevation to the heights can be
realised. The answer is that it is already a working
power in the new nature of the Christian. The beginning
of the Christian life is the discovery that Christ has
come from heaven to take us back to heaven, and so has
given us life from above. From the day that a man really
comes into vital union with our risen and ascended Lord
there begins within him a process of gravitation upwards.
He now discovers that he does not really belong to earth,
but has a heavenly nature which responds to God's call to
the life on high. As he progresses, he finds that his new
life leads him further and further away from the world in
which he lives, and although this involves him in some
difficulties and even embarrassment, he cannot find
himself at home here as he once could. This very inward
pull is evidence that he is a child of the heavenly
country.
The consummation of the believer's life is certainly
upward - for he is to be caught up to be forever with the
Lord. So the life is a constant movement upward, from its
first beginnings to its glorious end. This means that,
like his Lord, he must learn to respond to the heavenly
gravitation, not clinging to earthly interests and
possessions, not being bound by earthly considerations,
but giving always an inward answer to the call of heaven.
So far as Christ was concerned even His physical going up
into a mountain illustrated how eager He was to respond
to this call. And I believe that when at last He ascended
to the Father, His heart was filled with the deepest
satisfaction at home-going. It will surely be the same
with us. We shall not go reluctantly and with regrets;
no, we shall be rising to where we belong and what we
were made for; we shall be rising to the final
ascendancy, and in doing so we shall be answering to
everything in our new constitution. Spiritually we are a
mountain people. Let us now seek grace day by day, so
that we may repudiate all earth-boundness and refuse to
dwell in the valley. We may often have to pass through
it, but we must never settle down there, for we belong to
the heights in Christ. "Here we have no abiding
city, but we seek one to come" (Hebrews 13:14).
From
"Toward The Mark" Jan-Feb, 1972, Vol. 1-1
