There are seven prominent mountains
in the scriptures which the Lord has used to manifest certain
aspects of His character and purpose. Mount Moriah. It is upon this
mountain that the Lord instructed Abraham to offer up his son Isaac.
And he said, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him
there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I
will tell thee of. It was here that the promise of God was demonstrated
to Abraham even as he testified to Isaac. My son, God, will provide
himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together.
It was here that he saw the fulfillment of his hope as the Lord provided
the sacrifice. It is also upon this very mount
that the Lord directed Solomon to build the temple. The promise
delivered on Mount Moriah preceded that law, which was delivered
upon the next mountain and has more glory, which is Mount Sinai.
Dark and foreboding is that mountain that could not be touched lest
one perish, and Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke because
the Lord descended upon it in fire. It was here that the Lord
gave Moses the written law, which was added because of transgressions.
Sin existed before the giving of this coded law to the Jews,
but God would demonstrate his utter hatred of sin and the certain
doom of those who are sinners by the giving of this law. Even
Moses would perish here except he was hid in a cleft of the
rock. Mount Sinai is not a place of comfort, nor does it hold
out any hope for a trembling sinner, for it is clearly a place
of woe and destruction and speaks forth certain doom to all who
venture there. The law can afford no peace to
the people of God, but it does give them a vantage point from
which the mercy of God is seen, in such contrast even as Moses
saw from the next mountain, Mount Pisgah. It is from this lofty
peak that Moses was able to survey the land of promise which the
Lord had given to the children of Israel. Yet Moses could not
enter this land of promise any more than a man can be justified
by the works of the law. The Lord buried Moses in that
wilderness, and no man knows of his sepulcher to this day.
And then we have Mount Carmel. For the most part, God is pleased
to hide his glory from men, lest they be destroyed by that sight.
And he said, thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man
see me and live. Yet from time to time he is pleased
to give men a glimpse of his majesty and to demonstrate his
sovereign dominion over all of the gods of man's imagination.
We see him do so as Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal at Mount
Carmel and mocks them and their pipsqueak God as the true and
living God answers with fire. The God of heaven and earth has
no rival, and is an absolute God who does according to his
will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the
earth. He forms the light and creates the darkness, and has
done whatsoever he hath pleased. Then we come to the Mount of
Transfiguration. The Father would manifest the superiority of Christ
Jesus over both the Law and the Prophets as He appeared upon
this mount with Moses and Elijah. They both disappeared in the
light which shone round Him, in His most excellent glory,
and the Father made it clear that Christ alone is the spokesman
for God. God, who at sundry times and
in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son,
whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made
the worlds. And this is the record that God
hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son
of God hath not life. Then we come to the Mount of
Olives. It was here that our blessed Lord began to be sorrowful
unto death, pouring out his soul as an offering for the sins of
those which he came into the world to save. Here in Gethsemane's
garden was the sight of the bitterest anguish that any human has ever
borne. He willingly drank the cup of God's wrath and was in
the anteroom of hell as he gave himself up to bear the dreadful
curse of sinners. Which brings us to Mount Calvary.
This is the place of the skull, the altar where the blood of
the precious and spotless Lamb of God was poured out as an offering
for the sins of His people. No mountain in all of the scripture
is more central to God's purpose of redemption than this sacred
ground. It is here that Christ finished
the work that He came to perform. It is here that He triumphed
over sin, satisfying the claims of a broken law which demanded
the death of the guilty. He who knew no sin became sin
for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Well did the Apostle Paul exclaim,
but God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and
I unto the world. Have you been to Mount Calvary?
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