Many of the mountains of Scripture bring to us teaching from God for our enlightenment and edification. In the Old Testament, when we hear of Mount Ararat, the flood and the new world come before us; Mount Hor, where Aaron died; Mount Nebo, where Moses died after having seen the promised land; and Mounts Gerizim and Ebal where the blessings and curses of the law were to be pronounced. All have their own voice and teaching for us. In the New Testament there are the mountains associated with the blessed Lord while on earth, such as that from which the tempter showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and offered them and their glory to Him if He would worship him, but which the Lord rejected by quoting, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Let us look at some of the mountains of Scripture to learn from them what God would teach us.
Mount Moriah
The trial of Abraham was a very severe one when God said to him, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Gen. 22:2). In these words God assured Abraham that He was well aware of the greatness of the demand He was making from him, for He spoke of his “only Son” and of one he loved. There could hardly have been a greater test for Abraham’s faith, but the faithful saint of God at once answered to the requirement of the God in whom he trusted, for “Abraham rose up early in the morning” to take his journey to the place of sacrifice.
We cannot tell all that passed through the heart and mind of Abraham, but we do know that his heart would be filled with sorrow at the thought of giving up his well-beloved son. Yet his confidence in God rose above every natural feeling, for the Scripture tells us that he went to the mount of sacrifice “Accounting that God was able to raise him (Isaac) up, even from the dead” (Heb. 11:19). Abraham did not know that God would raise up Isaac, but he knew that He was able to do it, and he no doubt judged that this was the only way in which God would be able to fulfil His promise concerning Isaac (Gen. 17:19).
While delighting in the unquestioning faith of Abraham, the same faith that had brought him from Ur of the Chaldees, we can also rejoice in the grace of God that supplied the faith that enabled His tried saint to answer to His demands. God has shown in the testings of His servants Abraham and Job, that He will not suffer His own to be tried beyond what they are able to bear (1 Cor. 10:13). Satan thought he knew Job better than God, so God allowed him to test the patriarch most severely to prove that His work in Job was greater than all the afflictions that the malignity of the devil could bring against him.
Apart from all that the faith of Abraham teaches us in Mount Moriah, there is also the wondrous grace of God towards His servant in sparing Isaac, and in swearing to bless Abraham and his seed, in this way confirming His promises, so that nothing, not even the failure of Israel under law, could intervene to turn God from His purpose to bless the seed of Abraham. How very wonderful too is the figure of Isaac on the altar! Here on Mount Moriah is this blessed foreshadowing of the Father giving His only-begotten Son, the true Lamb of God, for the fulfilment of purposes greater than those relating to an earthly people, even to His eternal purposes in Christ Jesus for the procuring and blessing of a heavenly people.
Mountains in the Life of the Lord
We have already noticed the perfections of the Son of God when tempted on the exceeding high mountain by Satan, but there is another mountain that comes in prominently in His public ministry, where He taught His disciples the principles of the kingdom of heaven. The divine instruction of Matthew 5 – 7 is of the greatest value to the saints of God, telling of their blessings in relation to their character, sufferings and testimony in a hostile world, and of the requirements of God from those who follow in the steps of His Son, not the legal demands of Sinai, but the expression of the divine nature that was seen so perfectly in Jesus in this world.
Christ’s disciples are “the salt of the earth,” and “the light of the world,” and not only were men to be benefited by their presence in this world, but their Father glorified by their good works. The alms-giving, the prayers and the fasting of Christ’s disciples, were not to be like those of the religious hypocrites around them in Judaism, but as becoming those who followed the meek and lowly Jesus. The Christian’s treasure is in heaven, not in present things, and he is to serve the Lord in the knowledge that He will care for his every need. We are not to judge the motives of others, or to be in any way hypocritical, and to realise the value of the truth communicated to us. Not all who profess to be Christ’s are His disciples: they must have entered into His kingdom by the strait gate, to be bringing forth fruit for His pleasure, and to have builded their lives on the sure foundation of His word.
The Holy Mount
How blessed is the display of the glory of the Lord Jesus on what the Apostle Peter calls “the holy mount” (2 Peter 1:18), which foreshadowed the coming kingdom of God, when Jesus would come in His own glory as Son of Man, in His Father’s glory, and in the glory of the holy angels (Luke 9:26–36). If the glory of the holy angels was not seen on the mount, it will yet be seen when these great heavenly beings worship the Son of Man, as has been predicted in the words, “And let all the angels of God worship Him” (Heb. 1:6). They will bring their glory to the feet of Him who is not only Son of Man, but Son of God.
The glory of the Son of Man was seen as the face of Jesus shone as the sun, and His raiment was white and glistering; the blessing of the heavenly saints was seen in the glory in which Moses and Elias appeared, while the disciples on earth signified the place that the favoured remnant of Israel would occupy under Christ in the coming kingdom. There was also the cloud that indicated the presence of God, and the voice of the Father proclaiming the relationship of His beloved Son to Him, the voice clearly telling that the glory of the Father was present in the cloud. This was surely a wonderful pre-view for the disciples of the coming kingdom of God, with the display of the Son of Man in His own glory, and in the glory of the Father.
The Mount of Olives
When “every man went unto his own house, Jesus went to the mount of Olives” (John 7:53; 8:1). This was the place where He had communion with His Father. It was from the mount of Olives the Lord sent His disciples to bring the colt tied, whereon yet never man sat, to Him, and it was at the descent of the mount of Olives that the multitude met Him as He made His way into Jerusalem (Luke 19:29–41), weeping over it. During the Lord’s last days on earth, “in the day time He was teaching in the temple; and at night He went out, and abode in the mount called the mount of Olives” (Luke 21:37).
The mount of Olives was also the place where He taught His disciples about “the beginning of sorrows,” the signs that would indicate that His coming was near, of the tribulation of the last days, and of the judgments that would accompany His coming (Matt. 24). The parables of Matthew 25 would also be spoken on the same occasion.
David, in the time of his rejection, “went up by the ascent of mount Olivet, and wept as he went up” (2 Sam. 15:30), this sad and solemn event foretelling the rejection of the Lord Jesus who, having sung a hymn with His disciples “went out into the mount of Olives” (Matt. 26:30). Gethsemane was there, and in the anticipation of all that lay before Him the Son of God prayed that the cup might pass from Him, if it was the Father’s will, but He could say in coming from the garden, “the cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?” It was from the mount of Olives that Jesus ascended to heaven (Acts 1:12) and when He returns He shall stand with His feet upon that same mountain (Zech. 14:4). How hallowed then the scenes that Olivet brings before us in connection with the sorrows of the Son of God, with His teachings, with His communion with His Father, with His going into heaven, and with His coming again.
Mount Sinai and Mount Zion
The contrast between the systems represented by the mountains of Sinai and Zion is brought out very clearly in Hebrews 12, where the Hebrew Christians are told that they had not come “unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest…but ye are come unto mount Sion.” It was at Sinai that the law was given, and that Israel undertook to keep all the commandments of Jehovah, little understanding the divine requirements or their utter inability to keep what they had committed themselves to in a covenant of blood. God had dealt with them in grace until they bound themselves to the law, and their murmurings hitherto had not brought judgment from God. Under law, everything was on a different footing, for a curse resulted from breaking even one of the commandments. The sights and sounds of Sinai spoke of judgment, and even Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake.” It ought to have been evident to all that divine blessing could never be secured on the ground of law.
Mount Zion introduces an altogether different system of things, where divine blessing results from the sovereign mercy and grace of God, and this is the divine order into which Christians are already brought, and the ground on which God will deal with His people Israel in the day to come. When the Lord comes again, He will bring His earthly people Israel into covenant relationship with their God, but not on the ground of the covenant of Sinai, but as under the new covenant, as given in Jeremiah 31:31–34, and quoted in Hebrews 10:16-17 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
Paul, in 2 Corinthians 3, teaches that Christians are now blessed in the spirit of the new covenant, which for us is a ministry of the Spirit and a ministry of righteousness, the glory of the grace of God, in this covenant of blessing, shining now unveiled in the face of the Lord Jesus in heaven. Christians have very much more in the way of blessing that Israel shall have, being a heavenly people in association with a heavenly Christ, but both the Christian company and Israel in the coming day owe their blessing to God’s sovereign grace set forth figuratively in mount Zion. Many of the Old Testament Scriptures testify to the blessed time that awaits Israel in relation to Zion, an example of which is Psalm 87, where it is written, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.”
A Great and High Mountain
When God showed, by one of His angels, to the seer John, the worldly glory of the false church, He carried him “away in the Spirit into the wilderness” (Rev. 17:1–3), glory that was to be utterly destroyed by God’s judgment; but when He showed His servant the glory that He had prepared for the true church, His angel carried him away “to a great and high mountain” (Rev. 21:9-10). From the lofty heights, where nothing of earth could mar the vista, God showed His servant what was in His heart and purpose for the blessing of the Bride of His Son, just as He had taken Moses to the top of Pisgah to show him the goodly land, flowing with milk and honey, that He has reserved for His earthly people Israel.
It was from “an exceeding high mountain” that Satan had showed the Lord “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,” but which the Lord refused at his hand. Jesus had also refused the kingdom of Israel from the hands of those who ate of His loaves and fishes, but soon He will have all the kingdoms of the world, and the kingdom of Israel, from the hand of His God and Father, when “The kingdom of the world of our Lord and of His Christ is come,” and when He shall reign to the ages of ages (Rev. 11:15).
From this great and high mountain John saw “the bride, the Lamb’s wife…the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God” (Rev. 21:9–11), where no evil can come, where the apostles of the Lamb will have their promised portion, where the divine glory shines in its variegated hues, where God and the Lamb are the temple and the light, and to which the nations of the earth bring their homage. Flowing in God’s city, that which He has constructed for His delight and glory, is “a pure river of water of life,” in the heavenly paradise where the tree of life flourishes, with its fruits and leaves of healing, and where there is no sword or excluding cherubim.
Here too is the throne of God and the Lamb, where His servants find their pleasure in serving Him in nearness and intimacy, for they bear the character of the One they serve as having His Name on their foreheads. Nothing of man, or of the old creation, is needed in that scene of bliss, for all proceeds from Him who is the light of heaven, and who once was the Light of the world when here below. Those who received the divine light from the Word become flesh, and who bask in His light in the heavenly rest, will also reign with Him, and that for the eternal day.
If we have already come in the faith of our souls to mount Zion, and all connected with the day when God’s counsels for the blessing of His saints will be fulfilled, we have also for our present joy and guidance the wonderful vista from the great and high mountain, knowing that we shall have our part with Christ there, and that God will find His pleasure in the display of His glory in Christ and in those who, in His grace, He has associated with His Son.
R. 11.12.70