T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 7

The Mountain of the Heavenly Nature of the Kingdom

"And seeing the multitudes, He went up into the mountain: and when He had sat down His disciples came unto Him" (Matt. 5:1).

"And straightway He constrained the disciples to enter into the boat, and to go before Him unto the other side, till He should send the multitudes away. And after He had sent the multitudes away, He went up into the mountain apart to pray: and when evening was come, He was there alone" (Matt. 14:22-23).

For some time past there has been one thing pressing more and more strongly upon my consciousness and being forced up to recognition, and it is what we have often called "spiritual ascendancy". It seems to me that that is the issue for the church, and being the issue for the church, it is the issue for every child of God, every member of Christ. The end of the church's history on this earth is ascension, and it will not just be mechanical or automatic. It will be the climax of a spiritual history, which is this having learned to ascend in a spiritual way, of having come to know what real ascendancy means while here.

This as a necessity has, of course, been felt and recognized by the Lord's people fairly generally, and although many have not really perceived the inner nature of it, they have felt the need of it and so this very sense has been put into phrases, into language, which often have become a slogan. For instance, 'the victorious life' is almost a slogan. It has been the name given to certain kinds of Christian activity, work, teaching and movements. Others have used the word 'overcomer', have spoken about overcoming, and it has become the name or label for certain teaching and certain movements. And so we have these various ways of trying to put into a concrete expression something recognized and felt to be necessary, but not fully understood, and therefore often limited in its application and meaning. It has been limited rather to present, temporal, earthly things, rather than being seen as a great spiritual principle with a very much greater content than just getting the better of your temper and overcoming difficulties in your make-up and being a little more kind, generous and happy; for that is very largely the way in which the victorious life is thought of. There is something infinitely greater in the principle than most have recognized.

We shall therefore be occupied for a little while with this matter, and we have come to Matthew's Gospel which is very much marked by these heavenly features, things which indicate, symbolize and represent that heavenly position, that above position, for the church.

One of those features in this Gospel is the frequent occurrence of the word 'mountain' and the number of times in which we find a mountain brought into view. Another feature is the activity and ministry of angels. These are suggestions, at least, of something from above, something off the earth, something which in principle is ascendancy and a link with heaven. A mountain top is a link with heaven, in type and in figure. An angel visitant and ministry is a link with heaven. That is the thought which will lead us to the spiritual truth so vital and necessary for the children of God.

The Strength of the Mountains

You know this matter of what we term 'spiritual ascendancy', getting above, getting on top, breaking the power of earthly gravitation, mastering this down-pressure to bring us lower and lower and finally under. We are all conscious of this spiritual force that is focused upon Christians more than upon any others, to get them down, to get them to take a lower level or to accept a lower level, and then when they do that, that is not the end - still further down they go. Once you have started the downgrade, there is no end to it; once you have let go a little bit, you let go some more. The end will be overwhelming, submergence, thoroughly down. We are all conscious of that tremendous force of down-pressure and down-drag to keep us from maintaining a high level of spiritual ascendancy, mastery and spiritual dominion, of being on top of the enemy and things. That position really known, reached, and maintained, is a tremendous factor in the matter of fortification, of strength, and that, of course, is why the enemy always seeks to force the people of God down.

You remember the words in Psalm 125:1: "They that trust in the Lord are as mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides for ever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from this time forth and for evermore." Mountains? And the Lord like the mountains? What is that? It is fortification, it is strength, it is protection. And what is the point of fortification if there is nothing against which to be fortified?

Away back in Old Testament times, when the people came into the land, the remarkable thing is that they occupied the higher places more than the lower. You will find that their towns, cities and villages are almost all of them upon some high place; the reason being that their enemies, who had chariots and horses, had their strength on the level, in the plain, but they could do nothing with chariots and horses against mountains. And therefore the safety, security and fortification of the Lord's people was by being on high places. That is a parable. If the enemy can get you on to his level he has beaten you. So he must pull you down, he must get you down, he must get you to accept something less than God's full place and mind for you, and then he will undo you. That is what he has done with the church, speaking of the church now in very general terms. He has pulled it down to this world level; he has reduced it to the level of things here, and he has absolutely disintegrated it, broken it up and divided it and robbed it of its power. The church which is revealed to us in the New Testament is always on high ground. That is what we are going to see. In Ephesians, it is "in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus". It is a great power to be on high ground, it is a great defensive, protective factor; the enemy can do little with you if you keep up there and refuse to come down. Nehemiah found that to be so, when they said, Come down and let us confer; and he said, "I am doing a great work so that I cannot come down" (Neh. 6:3). It is a principle operating.

Now here you are in Matthew on the mountains round about Jerusalem. What you find here is that every one of these mountains reveals some great factor in the church's state of impregnability. We are simply going to take the main principles out of some of these mountains.

We come to Matthew chapter five. As you have looked at it, your eye has passed on from verse 1, and you need to let your eye run right through to the end of chapter seven, because it is chapters five, six and seven which contain what happened on this mountain.

The "Exceeding High Mountain" of Temptation

And may I remind you that this is not the first mountain mentioned in Matthew. There was an exceeding high mountain to which the devil took the Lord in vision and showed Him all the countries of this world and their glory, and said, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matt. 4:9). My point is this: the devil reached his highest point in that mountain of temptation, and the Lord beat him there. It was on a mountain that the devil, fully extended, was defeated by the Lord. The Lord, so to speak, takes up the whole of this question of ascendancy over all the power of the enemy, this place where the enemy's power is taken from him, and begins to apply it; and in the Holy Spirit there are always principles. This is not fanciful interpretation, it is not imagining something. You always have to ask the question, 'Why is it all written?' Is it just a pretty story, an incident? No! The Holy Spirit has, may I say, a 'mentality', and the Holy Spirit's mentality is always conscious of great spiritual principles which fill the universe and apply to everything. And whenever the Holy Spirit takes up anything, He sees through the thing to the principle behind it. If the Holy Spirit has inspired this Gospel and inspired a man to mention various mountains, He sees behind the figure to the principles.

And so the Holy Spirit has all the time a second interpretation in mind which is the true, the ultimate, and He is bringing that in representation. He will bring it out without representation presently through the apostles in the letters. It will be direct, it will be just pure spiritual truth; He will not have symbols in those letters, it will be direct teaching. He will not say then that the church is a city on a mountain; He will say that the church is in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. That is what He means all the way along. So the Lord is here taking up this matter of Satan's defeat as on a high place, and then proceeds to apply that and to tell us what are the secrets of that ascendancy, dominion, authority and power.

Then we come to these chapters, and does it not strike you as also containing something significant that, when you come to the end of this section, at the end of chapter seven, the talk on this first mountain, you have a man who has built his house upon a rock and the storms came and the winds blew and the house stood, for it was built upon a rock. It may only be suggestive, but it does seem to me to be rather remarkable that that is what the Lord is after - strength, stability, something that cannot be shaken. You will find that this is the idea of the mountain, "...as mount Zion, which cannot be moved" (Ps. 125:1). Spiritual ascendancy is only another way of saying a rock which withstands the storm.