Spiritual Ascendancy — T. Austin-Sparks

Psalm 125, they that trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion which cannot be but abideth forever. Mountains are round about Jerusalem. Here, night, lost, meditating in the eighty-fourths. I should be surprised something was not said on verse six of that psalm.

The Valley of Weeping and the Songs of Ascents

Passing of weeping, the valley of weeping. Eighty-fourths in the history of David, 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, the psalm ascents.

In eighty-four you're in the valley. In twenty you begin to climb out of the valley and to sing as you do so. Psalm 134, it is going up, singing. Psalm 121, I will lift up unto the mountains. Psalm 123, unto thee do I lift up mine eyes.

Although they are Psalm 125, they that trust in the Lord are as we have the people of God desires them to be. 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.

The High Places as God’s Dwelling for His People

The mountains are the divinely appointed dwelling places of God's people. It is instructive surely to note established as an ordinance in Israel, periodic ascents should go up in every year. And those ordinances going up are 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. 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. Their life was to be influenced by the mountains.

Those caravans, those processions, three times a year as they made ready and got on the march through the valleys and the plains, going up to Jerusalem in thought, you would find that they did have a tremendous influence upon the life of the people.

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. 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 perpetual abiding value in them. But I just want to emphasize this thought this morning.

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.

Mountains in the Gospel of Matthew

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.

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. You pass to chapter fourteen and he sends his disciples and the multitude away and himself goes up in a mountain.

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 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 a response. When you think of it, Jesus came down of weeping in order to take us up.

Christ’s Upward Life Against the Downward Course of Nature

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.

Despite our cleverly argued course of this world is downward. Make no mistake about it. Talk and so on. The natural course in every realm. And it's a tremendous battle to reverse that 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. He only came by way of the valley of tears to lead us out of it. What you observe can be said about this matter of mountains. I just would perhaps focus upon one or two things which are perfectly obvious.

Elevation Through Looking to the Lord

That mountains do suggest and represent elevation. Blind eyes unto the mountains. 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.

It's an un-elevating thing. It's 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 whence shall my help come? My help cometh. Mountains are round about Jerusalem. So it is in every sense an elevating thing to be joined to the Lord in heaven.

It's a morally elevating thing. It's a spiritually emancipating thing. It's a socially emancipating thing. Dear friends, most of us need as much as anything is a higher level. A more elevated kind of life.

A hemmed in place. Sit on the mountain is enlargement, isn't it? It really is enlargement. That's why some of us love the mountains so much. It does give us a sense of being liberated from the littleness.

It's freed from the smallness. No one who interprets that spiritually will remember words with strength for us Just because our familiarity with them has raised us up together with Christ and made us to sit in the heaven.

Individually and collectively, it's the church. Trouble, paralysis, weakness and wretchedness is because that position is not taken and maintained in the heaven. We could get on to 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 descendancy, it is security.

Security in the Heights and Communion with God

As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from this time forth and forever with the things that are against the people of God. And deliverance or security for them is in the high place.

Security have so often been built in the heights, haven't they? They're strewn everywhere over the world, the high places for strong fugitives. And ours 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. Deliverance, security necessitates that we forsake those low places.

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, get us down mentally or even physically, they just play that worrious game.

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. He was feeling the harass and drive, all the down 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. He 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 strength, that is fortification. And I close with another obvious thing about mountains. Mountains are the place of vision, aren't they?

The Mountain of Vision and the New Jerusalem

They are the place of the far distances. 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, a 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 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. It's a 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. If you have a great vision of God's purpose, intention, and of God's ability to reach his end, then you will indeed be the defeated plaything of all that is going on here. So he took his disciples up.

Whenever he had some big business on hand, he took them up into the mountain. 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.

The Christian Life as Heavenly and Upward

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.

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, of this world, and to this world.

Moving away from it brings many difficulties, many problems, some embarrassments, but there's the fact. We did find our home here, find our satisfaction here. It's the evidence. We are children of another, a heavenly country.

And the consummation 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.

Responding to Heaven’s Gravitational Pull

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. 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.

That there was never a more satisfied, satisfied and gratified heart than his was when at last he ascended to his Father. Oh, but I think as he went up, as he went up, the most perfect sense satisfaction.

It will be like that with us. It will be like that with us. It 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 to repudiate all after 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. Here ahead we seek one to come.