Psalm 125, 125, They
that trust in the Lord are as Mount
Zion, Which cannot be moved, but abideth forever,
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, So
the Lord is round about his people, From
this time forth, and forevermore.
Those of you who were here on Thursday
night, last will have been meditating in the
84th Psalm.
And although I was not here, I should
be surprised if something was not said on
verse 6 of that Psalm, passing through the
valley of weeping.
Passing through the valley, the valley of
weeping.
After Psalm 84, with all its context in
the history of David, of passing through a
very deep and dark and bitter valley of
weeping, we come to Psalm, or Psalms 120
to 134, which as you can see, form
a little volume of their own in the
whole book, called the Psalms or Songs of
Ascents.
Going up in 84, you're in the valley.
You reach 120 and you begin to climb
out of the valley, and to sing as
you do so.
On and on, right to Psalm 134, it
is going up, singing Psalms or Songs of
Ascents.
So you notice, with Psalm 121, I will
lift up mine eyes unto the mountains, from
whence shall come my help.
Psalm 123, unto thee do I lift up
mine eyes, O thou that sittest in the
heavens.
And Psalm 125, they that trust in the
Lord are as Mount Zion, as the mountains
are round about Jerusalem.
Here then, we have the people of God,
where the Lord always desires them to be.
We ought to underline the two words, passing
through the valley of weeping.
That is not the dwelling place of the
people of God, that's a passage, something through
which they pass.
But, Zion, the mountains, these are the divinely
appointed dwelling places of God's people.
It is instructive, surely, to note that the
Lord established as an ordinance in Israel periodic
ascents, that all their males should go up
three times in every year.
And those ordinances in Israel of going up,
going up, were governmental in their nature.
That is, the people were not to be
governed by the plains or the valleys, they
were to be governed by the high places.
They were to be governed by ascents, or
to be a people of the mountains.
They may spend time, perhaps much time, down
there.
But the Lord would have that broken into
repeatedly, and that they should be reminded that
that was not really their normal life, their
real life was up in the high places.
Their life was to be influenced by the
mountains.
Influenced.
And if you could, in imagination, join those
caravans, those processions, three times a year, as
they made ready and got on the march,
leaving the valleys and the plains, going up
to Jerusalem, you could, in thought, mingle with
them, you would find that they did have
a tremendous influence upon the life of the
people.
These songs or psalms, for instance, became the
songs for all time, not only in the
going up.
They were born of the going up, they
were provided for the ascents on these particular
occasions, but they did not just remain the
songs of three times a year, they are
the perpetual songs of Israel.
You read them through, these fourteen or fifteen
psalms, you see how much there is that
is of perpetual, abiding value in them.
But I just want to emphasize this thought
this morning, that the Lord's mind for His
people is not that they should abide in
the deep places and the shadowy places, though
they may have to go that way and
have to pass through the valleys from time
to time, the Lord's provided ordinance, the Lord's
thought and intention for His people is that
they should be people of the heights, of
the high places there should be, that governing
all their life which is above and not
beneath.
I have been very much impressed with the
very large place that mountains had in the
life ministry of our Lord.
You take up the gospel by Matthew, you
will find that it is strewn with mountains.
In chapter five, Jesus goes up into the
mountain, calls His disciples unto Him, and then
gives to them what Dr. Campbell Morgan has
called the manifesto of the kingdom.
That wonderful discourse, which in itself was on
such a high level, a higher level than
any other discourse or teaching in the whole
Bible, we call it the sermon on the
mount.
Here was the mount of instruction.
You pass to chapter fourteen, and He sends
His disciples and the multitude away and Himself
goes up in a mountain apart to pray.
The mountain of communion with God.
The next chapter, fifteen, we have Him going
up again the slope of the mountain and
the feeding of the multitude.
The four thousand miraculously.
The mountain of bread, of food for the
hungry.
Chapter seventeen, He takes His disciples up into
a high mountain and is transfigured before them.
The mount of transfiguration.
In chapter sixteen, chapter fourteen, He speaks to
them in the mountain about the signs of
the end.
The end of the dispensation and of His
coming.
That is chapter twenty-four.
Chapter twenty-six, He speaks to them about
His death and resurrection.
He takes them apart and unfolds to them
what is just about to happen, but what
will be beyond when He is risen again.
And then finally in chapter twenty-eight, He
meets them after His resurrection in the great
mountain where He appointed to meet them and
gave them their great wild commission.
See, all the way through this gospel, things
are related to mountains.
Now of course, every one of those requires
about an hour or so for its real
value.
I have no intention, don't worry, of even
starting on them.
I am only pointing out that there was
something about mountains that found in the very
heart and nature of our Lord an answering,
a response.
When you think of it, Jesus came down
and passed this way, this valley of weeping,
just in order to take us up, out
of it.
And His whole life, in every aspect, prayer
and teaching and walking, was a life on
a rising plane, a life to lift, a
work to lift.
It was a return movement to heaven and
to get as many back there with Him
as possible.
It was a gravitation upward that characterized His
life.
I am not surprised that mountains appealed to
Him because this low level here could find
nothing in Him to please Him at all.
The very nature and life of our Lord
was a complete contradiction to what is natural
here.
In spite of all that men so cleverly
argue, the natural course of this world is
downward.
Make no mistake about it.
Talk as you may about evolution and so
on.
The natural course is downward in every realm.
And it is a tremendous battle to reverse
that course in anything.
The human body, in nature around you, everywhere
in society, in international affairs, everywhere in everything,
the natural course is downward.
In spite of education, in spite of what
is called civilization, the trend is worsened, worsened,
down, down.
That is nature, but the Lord Jesus is
a complete contradiction to that.
The whole influence and effect of His presence
anywhere, of His life, His work, His teaching,
is to reverse that natural course and to
lift.
We know that is true.
His presence is a lifting thing.
He only came by way of the valley
of tears to lead us out of it.
Now so much, as you observe, can be
said about this matter of mountains.
And I just would perhaps focus upon one
or two things which are perfectly obvious.
That mountains do suggest and represent elevation, ascendancy.
I will lift up thine eyes unto the
mountains to take your eyes off of what
is here.
Ourselves and our conditions and this world and
to set them upon the Lord, high and
lifted up upon His throne as Lord over
Lord, over all, is an elevating thing.
It is an emancipating thing.
It is in itself a lifting thing.
Looking off unto Jesus is something that will
bring us out of our valley of weeping.
Just where our eyes are, that will affect
our life very much.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the
mountains from which shall my help come.
My help cometh from the Lord.
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem.
So it is in every sense an elevating
thing to be joined to the Lord in
heaven.
It is a morally elevating thing.
It is a spiritually emancipating thing.
It is a socially emancipating thing.
Dear friends, perhaps what most of us need
as much as anything is a higher level
of life.
It is a more elevated kind of life.
We are too small.
You know the valley is usually a hemmed
in place, a narrow place, a limited place.
But on the mountain is enlargement, isn't it?
It really is enlargement.
That is why some of us love the
mountains so much.
It does give us a sense of being
liberated from the littlenesses of life.
Freed from the smallness.
All the pettiness.
No one who lives amongst mountains can be
small.
Interpret that spiritually.
Remember words which have perhaps lost some of
their strength for us because of our familiarity
with them.
Have raised us up together with Christ.
And made us to sit in the heavenlies
in Christ.
Individually and collectively, as the church, a very,
very great deal of the present trouble, paralysis,
weakness, and wretchedness is because that position is
not taken and maintained in the heavenlies in
Christ.
We could get up higher.
Get onto high ground and leave so much.
Yes, leave all this that belongs to the
place of the shadows and the miasma.
The Lord's will that we should live on
high ground.
That's what he wills for us.
Then, as the psalm indicates, not only elevation,
descendancy, it is security.
My health, my health.
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so
the Lord is round about his people from
this time forth and forever.
Then the psalmist goes on with the things
that are against the people of God.
And deliverance or security for them is in
the high place.
Yes, security.
Strongholds have so often been built in the
heights, haven't they?
They're strewn everywhere over the world, the high
places for strongholds, for refuges.
And our strength, our safety, is to get
away from low things, mean things, contemptible things,
and to get up.
Get up high with the Lord.
It's the safe place.
Down there we are just the playthings of
all the currents and influences and forces that
are at work.
They rage in the low places, in the
dark places.
Find our strength, our deliverance, our refuge, our
security necessitates that we forsake those low places.
How shall I best put it?
You know the evil one and the evil
forces are tremendously concerned with getting us down
and holding us down.
And if only they can get us down
spiritually, get us down mentally, or even physically.
They just play havoc with us down there.
They tear us to pieces.
They harass and worry us day and night.
Down there.
Down.
That's their drive, their direction.
Bring them down.
Bring us down.
Our refuge is not to fight on the
low ground.
It's to flee to the heights, to escape
to the Lord in the secret place.
I think Lord Jesus did that himself.
A time when the pressure was great and
he was feeling the harass and drive, all
the down drag of earthly conditions, disappointments even
with his own disciples.
He said, let me get away from it
all for a time.
Up into the mountain with my father.
Came down fortified.
Marvelously fortified.
Yes it was fortification in the heights.
Keep your high place preserved intact.
Your place of escape.
Keep your mountain of communion with God preserved.
Because that is strength, that is fortification.
And I close with another obvious thing about
mountains.
Mountains are the place of vision, aren't they?
They are the place of the far distances.
Very true.
We come to the end of the Bible.
The end of the Bible.
The last chapters of the Bible.
We are taken to an exceeding great and
high mountain.
Shown the holy city, the New Jerusalem.
It's a mountain seen at the end.
At last, at last the church has arrived.
The heavenly church.
And it's the mountain of vision.
Always is like that.
So simply, very truly.
Dear friends, again, again, the great need of
every one of us and of the church
is an enlargement of vision.
Our vision is too small.
Our God is too small.
Our hope is too small.
Our purpose in life is too small.
The salvation which we cherish is after all
too small.
How strange it is that we do narrow
things down so much all the time.
In every way.
We need the mountain of vision.
We lose our vision.
There's no doubt about it.
We shall disintegrate.
We shall go to pieces.
The great vision that will ever save us,
but only a great vision will save us.
We lose our vision.
We are done.
We are finished.
We are beaten.
You have no great vision of God's purpose
and of God's intention and of God's ability
to reach His end.
And you will indeed be the defeated plating
of all that is going on here in
this world.
So He took His disciples up.
Whenever He had some big business on hand,
He took them up into the mountain.
And you and I need to be occupied
in big business.
That is, we must have large vision.
Now you say that's all very true, all
very good, but how?
Well, after all, the answer is in the
very nature of the Christian life itself, isn't
it?
The beginning of the Christian life is something
from heaven.
It is something that comes from heaven to
take us back to heaven.
It's life from above.
We all know quite well that from the
day when we really come into that vital
union with our risen and ascended Lord, there
begins in us a process of gravitating upward.
Something has come in that is of heaven.
And we know at once that we no
longer belong here.
It's the very nature of the Christian life
at its beginning.
But as we go on, we know that
the pilgrimage of the Christian life is farther
and farther away from this world.
Estrangement of this world and to this world.
Moving away from it brings many difficulties, many
problems, some embarrassments.
But there's the fact.
We cannot, as we once did, find our
home here, find our satisfaction here.
It's the evidence that we are children of
another, a heavenly country.
And the confirmation of the life of the
believer, the child of God, is upward, isn't
it?
To be received up by our Lord.
It's all upward from beginning to end.
The point is just this.
That we have, as the Lord himself did,
we have to respond to that heavenly gravitation.
Not cling to anything here.
Not allow ourselves to be bound by things
here.
We may have our miserable and wretched times,
but we are not to wallow in the
mire.
We must react with this reaction of heaven
that is in our very constitution by new
birth.
Say, this is not my place.
This is not my life.
The Lord Jesus did that.
Continually, continually, he answered to the inward call
of heaven.
And in his physical going up into the
mountain, he was only responding to an inward
drawing to get up out of this.
To get up out of this.
And I can believe that there was never
a more satisfied, utterly satisfied and gratified heart
than his was when at last he ascended
to his Father.
I don't know, but I think as he
went up, as he went up, the most
perfect sense of relief and satisfaction took possession
of him.
It will be like that with us.
At last, there will not be regrets and
sad farewells to this world.
No.
This is where we belong.
This is what we were made for.
Made for heaven.
The answer to everything in our new constitution.
Let us now seek grace day by day
to repudiate all aboundness and to refuse to
dwell in the valley.
Though we may have to pass through it,
let us see to it that we don't
stop there.
We do not make that our abiding place.
For it is true.
Here have we no abiding city.
We seek one to come.