Yes, I know that people mock the very idea that the Bible is the word of God. And, yes, I know that people claim that king Darwin has dethroned the Creator with his fanciful fairy tales of the evolutionary religion.
HOWEVER!!!!!!!
While the blind lead the blind away from the glories of God’s word, the poor in spirit open the treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge and are moved with awe and wonder at the splendors of their Father’s mind.
One of the treasures of God’s Book that constantly delights me is the way he weaves his words together like the threads of a tapestry so that the combination exalts the big picture of history as God’s glorious work of making a people of his very own, his treasured possession, his beloved and cherished children, and, at the same time, the big picture of the tapestry draws attention to one thread after another so that the very intricacies of the connections glorifies God for so masterfully revealing himself through words, and by his Spirit, that we can feel the joy of knowing God as our God.
Here is a glimpse into the way God masterfully wove together so many threads of wisdom and knowledge this morning that my praise to him had to be directed into praise about him.
For a while, God has drawn my attention to a scene in the tapestry that is described as, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”[1] This is written to Jesus’ church, the people of the new covenant. It is telling us that, while we face persecution and trouble in this world, we are not to think of God as some scary being that is totally unapproachable.[2] Instead, we are to see what Jesus has done for us in the new covenant and come before God in a way that is illustrated by God’s people coming to Mount Zion while under the old covenant.[3]
This has taken me on a journey of following the “Mount Zion” thread from its first appearance in the tapestry all the way to the glorious scene I just mentioned, and even further into the final book of God’s word that gives such majestic and glorious revelations of the heavenly Jerusalem that will be the home of God’s children forever.
Here are some other threads God wove together in my mind and heart so I could see the picture of what it means to come to Mount Zion today in the kingdom of God as illustrated by all the ways God made himself known through the Mount Zion of old.
In the last couple of days, I have followed the “Mount Zion” thread into Psalm 48. There I read that Mount Zion is God’s “holy mountain, beautiful for elevation”. Both “holy” and “beautiful” indicate that Mount Zion, the place associated with God’s presence with his people, is set apart and exalted above and beyond any of the locations the nations use to worship their gods and idols.
This thread wove into another that reminded me of the way “God has highly exalted” Jesus[4] so that the holy and beautiful elevation of Mount Zion includes the holy and beautiful exaltation of Jesus Christ our Lord.
But then I noticed another thread attached to these others as it reminded me that God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”[5] This means that even while we are here on earth looking up to the Mount Zion of God’s presence in heaven, there is another side to this in the way we who are “in Christ” are raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places. Somehow, already, our spiritual position is at the foot of Mount Zion where Jesus is exalted, and we are seated with him at the right hand of the Father.
These threads added another that reminded me that, “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”[6] We do not let ourselves adjust our emotions to the evil of the world, but we attach to the realities of Mount Zion that is filled with joy because of the joyfulness of God, and where Jesus himself is seated at the right hand of God’s eternal pleasures giving real pleasure to his beloved brothers.
As I pondered and meditated on this, considering how we are both living as “sojourners and exiles” in this world[7] while also seated with Christ in the heavenlies, I saw how this thread was woven all the way back to Abraham who lived in tents while “looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”[8] Abraham, the Father of our faith, lived like a stranger in the land that God has promised him, not looking only so far ahead as to consider the nation that would come from his son, but even further to the heavenly city he already knew was the focus of the story.
And that led me to Paul talking about our earthly life as living in a tent,[9] just like Abraham, because this earth is not our home. This earthly body is not the one we live in for eternity (falling on the ice at public skating Friday has reminded me in new and painful ways that this body just ain’t what it used to be!). We will one day be clothed with immortality as we are given our resurrected bodies, and in that much superior version we will rejoice in heavenly joy forever.[10]
The conclusion of all these threads weaving the picture God wants me to see right now is that everything he wants his children to think about in the darkness and evil of this world is that we are not coming to our nations, or our governments and leaders, or other world leaders and evil elites, but we are coming to the God who reigns from the heavenly Mount Zion where we are positionally seated with Christ in the most joyful and pleasurable place that exists. That is where we set our minds while the world’s evils try to wear us down.
As the writer of Hebrews had already stated,
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses (like Abraham), let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.[11]
There we have it: Jesus is seated at the right hand of the throne of God on Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the Great King, where we are seated with him, where the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore pour into our hearts from above while we endure the darkness of this evil world below, and as we “consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself,” we will “not grow weary or fainthearted.”[12]
And I trust that my considering of the Triune God of Mount
Zion helps you in that direction as much as it has helped me.
© 2023
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
[1]
Hebrews 12:22
[2]
As described in Hebrews 12:18-21 when God came to Mount Sinai to give Israel the
Law through Moses
[3]
The rest of the scene is described in Hebrews 12:22-25 but my focus at this
time is on the Mount-Zion thread
[4]
Philippians 2:9-11
[5]
Ephesians 2:6
[6]
Psalm 16:11
[7]
I Peter 2:11
[8]
Hebrews 11:9-10
[9]
II Corinthians 5:1-5
[10]
Paul gives an extensive description of our resurrected bodies in relation to
the resurrection in I Corinthians 15.
[11]
Hebrews 12:1-2
[12]
Hebrews 12:3
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