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.” 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.
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.
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 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.”
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.”
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
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.” 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,
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.
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.
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.”
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.)
