“Who
shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall
stand in his holy place?” (Ps. 24:3).
“Thou
shalt bring them in, plant them in the mountain of thine
inheritance, the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for
thee to dwell in, the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands
have established” (Ex. 15:17).
“And I saw, and behold, the Lamb
standing on the mount Zion, and with him a hundred and
forty and four thousand” (Rev. 14:1).
The
great question of the ages, we have said, is this:
“Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?”.
The answer is found, in the first instance, in those who
are called “firstfruits unto God and unto the
Lamb” (Rev. 14:4); in a representative company,
symbolically (not literally but symbolically) said to be
one hundred and forty-four thousand. We indicated the
significance of that number in our previous meditation.
Of
course, our first business must be to identify “the
hill of the Lord”. It is not something new to most
of you when I say that as there is spiritual history
behind literal history in the Bible, and spiritual
geography behind literal geography, and so on, so it is
with this place called “the hill of the Lord”.
What I mean is that in the Bible everything has a double
meaning, and things which are seen, which are visible and
tangible and palpable, are used to indicate a counterpart
which is spiritual. The Bible is full of history, but you
know how that history is all a portrayal of something
spiritual that is going on. Events and happenings have
behind them spiritual meanings. Even in the physiological
realm of our bodies this is so. They are used to suggest
and indicate spiritual principles. And when we come to
the geography of the Bible, perhaps it is more patent
than anywhere else. Think of all the place names which
have not merely taken on a symbolism, but which do
actually represent something spiritual that has happened
or does happen there. For instance, “Bethel”
(which means “the house of God”) is not just a
name given to a place, but something happened there which
had implicit in it all the spiritual meaning of the house
of God. When Jacob came first to Bethel and laid down
there that night to rest, the heavens opened. In his
dream he saw a ladder, and upon it communications were
set in operation between heaven and earth, and God above
it began to speak to him, telling him of His covenant. If
all that does not really mean to us the house of God in a
spiritual way, well, we have not seen the house of God
yet. For the spiritual house of God is surely this, that
it is something which LINKS heaven and earth and
through which the communications of God are brought to
men. This implies that there are those on the earth who
have an opened heaven and who have entered into the
blessings of the covenant; and very much more than that.
That is Bethel. It is not just a name; it means something
spiritual which was borne out by the experience of a man.
We could go on dealing with place names, showing that,
while you have come upon a name, a place, you have come
upon something more than that. You have come upon some
divine thought, divine principle, divine law, something
in the mind of God. When you get behind the thing seen
you are encountering something which, though unseen, is
eternal, mighty, tremendous. So that places, mountains,
valleys, and all that have to do with geography, have a
spiritual meaning in the Bible.
The Hill of the Lord — Christ
in Absolute Ascendency
Here,
then, is “the hill of the Lord”. We have to
identify that hill, first literally and then spiritually.
It does not take very long to do that because the Psalms
almost open with the identity of the hill of the Lord. “Yet
I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (Ps.
2:6). “My holy hill of Zion” is,
historically and literally, the hill of the Lord.
What,
then, is Zion spiritually? Do you remember that that
second Psalm was quoted right at the beginning of the
church’s history? When the earthly forces set
themselves in array against the Lord and against His
anointed ones, the latter met in prayer and quoted that
Psalm, and the place where they were assembled was shaken
(Acts 4). The very shaking of heaven came into that
place. What did it say? You have touched the holy hill of
Zion! Where is that? The Lord Jesus is ascended to the
right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. It is the place
of absolute ascendency, victory, power. Who is Lord now? “The
kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take
counsel together, against the Lord, and against his
anointed... Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of
Zion”.
Zion,
then, is not a place on the earth: Zion has now resolved
itself into the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ at
God’s right hand. Thus the apostle writes, “Ye
are come unto mount Zion... the heavenly Jerusalem...
the... church of the firstborn who are enrolled in
heaven” (Heb. 12:22-23). It is no longer
a place, it is a spiritual position. That is Zion, and we
have identified the holy hill.
Who
shall ascend? Who shall stand? You see, this is a present
question. While the consummation of this lies at the end
of the way, it is something which has a present bearing
upon the life of the Lord’s people. Let me say in
fuller definition that Zion, or the holy hill of the
Lord, spiritually embodies all that divine thought which
the people of God will express when He has them, as He
will have them, wholly according to His will. In other
words — when God gets a people where He has ever
determined to have them, He will have them in what is the
spiritual counterpart of Zion — absolute ascendency
over all other powers.
Ascendency — The Normal
Outworking of Implanted Divine Life
That
divine thought begins in a very simple way. It begins by
the implanting and imparting of divine life.
“Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God;
He Whose word cannot be broken, formed thee for His own
abode”.
The
psalm upon which that hymn is constructed makes
comparisons between other great cities and places of
world fame. “I will make mention of Rahab” (that
is, of Egypt) “and Babylon... Philistia, and
Tyre, with Ethiopia”; and men were saying,
“This one and that one was born there, and is proud
of it”. But “of Zion it shall be said, This
one and that one was born in her”. “The Lord
loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of
Jacob... this one was born there” (Ps. 87). It
is in birth that the beginnings of God’s thought
about Zion take place. By the receiving of divine life we
have inherent in us all the power of this mighty
spiritual ascendency which in the end, if it is not
thwarted, will bring into the throne.
I say
that for this reason among others, that what we are
talking about is not something extra to and altogether
apart from the normal course of Christian life. It cannot
be argued that to be a Christian and a simple disciple of
the Lord Jesus, a lover of Christ, is one thing, but this
is something else. Not at all! It is an entirely confused
mind which thinks like that. This is the normal
outworking of that life which every born-again child of
God possesses, if that life is allowed to work out
normally. If you stop short, if you do not go on beyond a
certain point, if you become contented too soon, if you
become turned aside, if you allow yourself to be
prejudiced, disaffected, influenced by anything that
prevents you from going right on, you have intercepted
the normal course of the divine life which is in you. If
you will accept all that is involved (and it is following
the Lamb wherever He goes, which means suffering and
sacrifice), if you will give the Lord implicit obedience,
if you will trust Him where you cannot understand Him, if
you will allow Him to do all that He wants to do with
you, your normal course will be to arrive at the throne;
that is, to come to absolute spiritual ascendency. We are
not seeking to put something extra upon Christians, but
to say to Christians, “This is your
birthright”.
We
were speaking earlier about Jacob. To return to him for a
moment: whatever there was about Jacob, he did see that
in the birthright the place of ascendency was found, and
so it came to be that he gained the place of ascendency.
Eventually he became a prince with God, the father of the
twelve tribes, the governmental body in God’s
electing thought, the foreshadowing of the hundred and
forty and four thousand, the twelve times twelve a
thousand times over. It is all implicit in the
birthright. No one has any particular favouritism in the
matter of the birthright. No one is elect to the
birthright; that is, no one is elect to salvation. If we
are elect, it is according to the PURPOSE of
salvation. That is another subject. The point here is
that it is right there in the gift of eternal life at new
birth that the throne is implicit, that ascendency is
found. Well, it works out in that way, at any rate, and
we must remember that this divine life is not something
abstract, but personal; it is the Spirit of life Himself.
And
what does the Holy Spirit do with a life in which He has
a free, full way? Well, He never allows that life to drop
down on to low levels without the one concerned knowing
it. You know quite well, in the very simplicity of your
relationship with the Lord Jesus from the beginning, that
if you make a blunder, say or do something, look or feel
something, that is on the lower level of the old life,
you are made aware of it, and you are not happy until you
put that right. As you go on further with the Lord, you
become not less, but infinitely more sensitive. You
suffer very much more over lapses the further on you go.
You know with increasing intelligence what it means to
grieve the Holy Spirit. Why? Because the Spirit is
gravitating back to the place from where He has come,
gravitating back in us, and the whole gravitation of a
Spirit-governed life is upward. It is a test as well as a
statement of fact. Are you gravitating thus? Is there a
pull upward? Can you be happy and comfortable living a
low-level Christian life? There is something wrong if you
can. That is very simple. The very beginnings of this
life of ascendency are found in the gift of divine life,
and the whole course is the outworking of that life. When
we come (if we do by the grace of God come eventually) to
that place of Rev. 14, it will not be because of any
particular merit, but simply that the life has triumphed
in us. So you see the consummation of that great thought
and purpose of God is glory. The beginning is life, the
end is glory.
But
what is glory? It is the triumph of life. The body of our
humiliation shall be made like unto the body of His glory
(Phil. 3:21). How shall this be? Well, it is all by the
Lord the Spirit. It is all by the inworking of His life,
resurrection life; glory at the end where life is
triumphant. That is said for this reason, that this is
the normal Christian life; and the abnormal Christian
life is that which acts by fits and starts, up and down,
and can be content not to go right on. There is something
wrong about that; something has interfered with the
normal growth.
Here
you see that Zion is really something that is planted in
us by birth. You remember that other fragment from the
Psalms in this connection — “In whose heart
are the highways to Zion” (Ps. 84:5). It does
not say, Whose feet are on the highways of Zion. It is
something subjective: Zion is inside, and it represents a
tremendous transformation or change.
Israel’s Failure —
Egypt, Not Zion, in Their Hearts
Now we
have to come back again and use our great illustration of
Israel. Israel came out of Egypt and were ostensibly
going toward that holy hill, but really they were not.
You look for the reason why they took such a long time
about it and made such poor progress, and eventually did
not arrive at all. You ask for the explanation, and it is
this, that, while they were out of Egypt, Egypt was not
out of them. Something objective had been done, but
nothing subjective. All the time in their hearts they
harked back to Egypt. The world was still in their
hearts, and that was the cause of all the trouble. When
you have the highways of Zion in your hearts, you have
not got the highways of Egypt in your hearts. Something
has been done inside to supplant something else. It is
the only way of eradicating anything from the heart. You
have to supplant it, to put some greater power within;
what Dr. Chalmers called in his famous sermon, “the
expulsive power of a new affection”. The only way to
expel the world is to have a new affection. “I
will make mention of... Zion... this one was born
there... All my fountains are in thee”.
This
ascendency takes its rise from the supplanting in our
hearts of the world by Christ and all that Christ means.
It was that again — and we find ourselves at every
turn coming back to the great example of the apostle Paul
— it was that which made him cry, even when so far
on in the way, “I count all things to be loss for
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord” (Phil. 3:8). That word
“excellency” is interesting. It means “the
‘ascendency’ of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord” — that this is above everything else:
all things counted loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus. That kind of thing in the
heart is the only way to get rid of all the rest.
Egypt Flatters Self — Zion
Slays It
But
the rest is so subtle, it does find so great a response
in us. It is here, of course, that the enemy cunningly
works to arrest spiritual progress. The world? “Oh
yes”, you may say, “I have given my life to the
Lord: I am born again, I have finished with the world, I
am out and out for the Lord now. All my life, service and
energy is for the Lord”. “Very well”, says
Satan, “let us placard your name everywhere as a
great witness for the Lord, and then you will begin to be
made a lot of by organized Christianity!” It is all
wrapped up under the guise of affording you a great
opportunity, and you are altogether unaware of how nice
it is, and how you like it. What has happened? That is
not the way of the Lamb. What is the way of the Lamb? He “emptied
himself” (Phil. 2:7) — “made himself of no
reputation”, A.V. “He emptied
himself”: the devil is out to FILL you. Since
he could not fill you with the world, he is going to fill
you now with the gratification of the natural life in the
service of God. It will not live very long. It will spend
itself, and it will, moreover, mean spiritual immaturity.
It is not the way of the Lamb.
If we
were to press this, we could expose that whole thing very
thoroughly by a good deal of evidence. If the enemy
cannot get us in one way, he will get us in another, and
he has got many a young life by flattery, ruined many a
powerful servant of God by popularity. Yes, he has
brought him down from his excellency by deeply-laid
devices in the way of fame, pushing on, bringing to the
fore; getting into the limelight, giving a name.
Spiritual life has gradually receded and the end has been
tragedy. That is not fiction, that is a tragic fact. The
way to Zion, the way to the throne, the way to spiritual
ascendency is the way of the cross, and the cross ever
more deeply planted right down to the very roots of
self-interest, self-gratification, self-pleasure, even in
the things of God. In the end we shall be brought to the
place where it is not the Lord’s things that delight
us, but the Lord Himself alone Who is our life. So the
whole scheme of the enemy is to make the work of the Lord
so attractive, to offer the prizes, the spheres, the
opportunities, and all that sort of thing. It is very
nice, it is very pleasant, it answers to something in our
fallen nature. That something has to pass through the
crucible of the cross. It may be something legitimate,
something God-implanted, something essential to the
outworking of this divine purpose, but it has been
dragged into a realm of defilement.
Ambition Right If Selfless
You
can call it what you like; aspiration, ambition, wanting
to get on, wanting to rise. It is there in the
constitution of man, and rightly so; God put it there. “Thou
makest him to have dominion” (Ps. 8:6). That is
not just official, positional. That is the fulfilment of
some divine power at work in the very constitution of man
that makes him feel he must rise, but it has been
perverted. It is perverted by the great pervert, who
himself was perverted by his own pride when he said, “I
will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make
myself like the Most High” (Isa. 14:14); and who
came down to Eve and said, “Hath God said...? Why,
God knows that in the day that you eat, you will have the
root of the matter in you, you will not be dependent on
God for your knowledge, you will not have to obey God,
you will have it in yourself!” Adam and Eve fell to
it, and the race fell with them, and from that day to
this that holy thing of aspiration — shall we call
it ambition? — that great power in us that makes us
know we are born for a destiny, is perverted and tainted
by self, by pride. So that a man has advanced far on the
road to holiness who can never be caught along the line
of flattery and popularity, to whom the siren charms and
voices are as nothing, because he walks so humbly with
his God, meek and lowly in heart. All the prizes and
baubles have no attraction for him. I say that is in the HOLY
hill of Zion. We are touching another thing now, how
holiness is inherent in ascendency. But that must wait.
It is
not wrong to have ambition, to have aspiration, but it is
wrong to have it actuated by personal interest and
motive. That has to go through the crucible of the cross
and be burnt out. Here is the paradox, the problem, the
difficulty of a true Christian life: to be broken,
emptied, humbled, reduced to nothing, and yet at the same
time to have a fiery ambition. How reconcile these two
things? I find it in Paul. With the exception of the Lord
Jesus Himself, no man was more mastered by the spirit of
ascendency and dominion — shall we call it ambition,
aspiration? — than he was, and no man was more
selfless in it all. How he suffered at the hands of those
who owed everything to him instrumentally! There is no
personal thing here. He is the man who can write,
“Love... seeketh not its own, is not puffed up, doth
not behave itself unseemly — giveth itself no
airs”. All that is ascendency; not just geographical
location, but spiritual ascendency. Oh, let us ask the
Lord to put in us a passionate ambition for His glory,
and that we may be kept purified by the cross so that our
glory does not force its way in. That will need a lot of
the grace of God.
Holy Ambition — To Attain to
Zion
All
this is the meaning of Zion, of spiritual ascendency, and
we have really to face its implications. As I have said
before, it is a matter which has a very present
application. I know I run the risk of being charged with
spiritualizing everything in the Bible. However, what I
am after is that which is eternal. Everything else will
go. It may be a casket in which eternal jewels are
deposited, but the casket will go. I am after the jewel.
At the back of all the symbols and of all actualities
there is something spiritual, and for me it is far more
profitable to get to what is God’s inner thought in
things that He says, than it is to be only occupied with
the thing said. You may take the book of the Revelation
and deal with it historically if you like: you can take
it on the futurist basis if you like; you can interpret
it literally if you like; but it does not get you very
far spiritually to do that. What we need is that
spiritual life should be increased, and what I see as the
grand issue of the book of the Revelation is a company
standing with the Lamb upon mount Zion, whatever that may
be. For me, interpreted in the light of all the
Scriptures, it is not merely a time nor a location. It is
the arrival at the end of God’s thought in our
redemption, coming to the fullness of the meaning of
having been redeemed from this present evil world and
translated into the kingdom of the Son of God’s
love, and reaching the place of highest usefulness to Him
when time shall be no more. I suggest to you that it is
those things that have very much more immediate spiritual
value for us than such questions as whether or not the
Jews are going back to Palestine.