Divine Images, part 9: Mountains

 

When I began this series I wrote: "God has not only furnished us with a world that speaks of His power and majesty, but a world also which is full of what Jonathan Edwards called “divine images”.   Because of the Bible, these things which God has created bear witness of Him.  With a Bible in our hands the world is - in a sense - transformed, so that everywhere we go we cannot help but think of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us." 

 

When you look at the mountains, what are you meant to think of?  They are beautiful of course, and they are a testament to the creative might of God.  But they are more than evidence of a great Creator.  We know that because God has said more than that.

 

When you see the mountains or perhaps large hills remember the following:

 

First, remember that God's righteousness is like great mountains.  In other words, as Spurgeon explains, His righteousness is "firm and unmoved, lofty and sublime."  God is immovable, and as He is immovable so is His righteousness.  He cannot be anything but righteous.  He cannot act in unrighteousness because He is righteous.  Even as the great mountains cannot be moved, nothing can ever move Him to be otherwise.  Like the great mountains His righteousness is high and awesome.  It is a righteousness that is beyond our comprehension.  It is also a righteousness that - to the eye of His believing children - is glorious to behold.  His is a righteousness that is very great.  Unlike our shallow weak and shakeable righteousness, His is a towering, wonderful and unshakeable righteousness.  The psalmist says, "Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep (Psalm 36:6)."  

 

Second, remember His great power.  Though the mountains are very great, the Bible says that God moves them.  He overturns them as if grabbing them by their roots.  Think for a moment of the power needed to grab a medium sized tree and pull it up by the roots.  How great and mighty is God?  As if pulling weeds from a garden He overturns the mountains by the roots (Job 28:9).  Job 9:5 says, He "removeth the mountains, and they know not: which overturneth them in his anger."  Psalm 65:6 says, Why by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girdeth with power."  It is by their strength that the great mountains rest where they do.  He created them out of nothing, He holds them fast, and He removes them at His pleasure.  

 

Third, remember God's wonderful protection of His people.  Psalm 125 says, "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever."  Ponder those glorious words for a moment.  There is nothing like the strategic advantage that mountains provide.  In olden days cities surrounded by mountains were close to impenetrable.  How much better to know that God is round about his people?!  We know that God is everywhere so this not difficult for Him.  But the Psalmist is saying more than that.  It is something like when Paul said that if God is for us who can be against us?  If God is round about His people He is there for their protection.  He is their rock, their refuge, their fortress, their high tower.  The Psalmist is saying that the LORD is our defence.  He is omnipresent, but He is near on behalf of His own.  He gives nations for them.  They are the apple of  His eye.  They may feel that they are surrounded by enemies (and, indeed, they may be), but between them and the enemy is the LORD who is for ever round about them with loving attentiveness and an omnipotent arm.  

 

Fourth, remember that we are not to fear because God is our refuge.  Psalm 46 says, “Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.”  In this case attention is drawn to the possibility (however incredible it seems) of the removal of mountains.  They do seem to stand forever.  They are - generally speaking - immovable.  But suppose they were carried into the midst of the sea.  Still God is our refuge and we need to fear.  

Fifth, remember that a day is coming when peace and righteousness will be everywhere.  Even as the world is adorned with great mountains, little hills and deep valleys, a day is coming when it will be adorned with peace and righteousness in the mountains and hills.  Peace and righteousness shall be everywhere. "The mountains will bring peace to the people, And the little hills, by righteousness (Psalm 72:3)."

 

Sixth, remember that God is everlasting.  Psalm 90:2 says, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."  The mountains do not come and go.  Kings and kingdoms do.  Nations rise and fall.  Generations pass, people come and go, time passes and names are forgotten… but the mountains are still there.  And yet before they were brought forth God was.  He is from everlasting to everlasting.  See Proverbs 8:25.

 

Seventh, remember that when you were lost in sin Jesus came for you.   The Song of Solomon uses mountains and hills to picture the vast and impossible chasm between the bride and her groom (2:8).  Using allegory Solomon pictures the bride confronted with her mountains of sin.  What a powerful picture.  How many sins have we committed in our lifetimes?  If we could see them before us, if somehow our sins could be set before us in a great heap would it not rise before us like a great mountain?  And so there in Song of Solomon the sin of the bride is like great mountains or hills that separates her from her beloved Groom.  Sin separates us from God.  Here is One Altogether Lovely.  And yet we cannot come near Him.   We have no right of access, no privilege of communion.  We are by nature condemned and separated from the only One who is good.  But our Groom, the Lord Jesus, came for us.  As Ephesians says, “But God”.  But - God loved us.  And so we read, "He cometh leaping upon the mountains skipping upon the hills.”  Jesus crossed those mountains to get to His bride.  The Father gave us to the Son, and the Son came for us.  And the image found in the Song of Solomon depicts Him not labouring across this great divide as if unwillingly but skipping.  How eagerly and joyfully He came.  For the joy that was set before Him He went to the cross.  He loved us then.  He wanted us then.  As He prayed in the garden He told the Father He wanted us to appear with Him in glory.  And so when our sin rose us before us like great mountains, even before we realized we were confronted with a debt that we could never repay and faced with an obstacle we could never overcome, it was Jesus who came skipping over that great divide to be at His bride.  He came to save her and bring her to Himself.