We recently returned (with everyone accounted for, praise the Lord!) from our annual trek into the wilderness for our version of summer camp with the young people of the Houston Baptist Church. For this year's adventure, we returned to the Buffalo River, which meanders through the Ozark Mountain range. The contrasts between winding river and sheer cliffs are a sight to behold. Arkansas is rightly dubbed the "Natural State" (though I do prefer our original nickname which was the "Land of Opportunity" until the 1980's, but that's another story for another day).
The time that we spent was both enjoyable and profitable as we benefitted from creation, from Christian fellowship, and from time spent in God's Word. Our lessons from Scripture centered around the theme we called, "On the Mountain". We examined the significance of God's use of mountains in Scripture and how God, many times down through history, has called a man or men up to the mountains to meet with him there.
The first mountain we considered was Mount Ararat. This mountain is important to the storyline of history because it is the place where God completed His rescue of His remnant after judging the entirety of the race of humans save eight. The realities of judgment and rescue are made unavoidably clear to us at Mount Ararat.
Ararat was followed by Mount Sinai, which is the location where God met with His called-out people, giving them the Law that they were to live by. Blessings and curses were both imposed there. Blessings for adhering to God's law and curses for ignoring it. And though we do realize that the Law does not save us but exposes our sinfulness to us instead, we also acknowledge the applicability of God's Law in our day and the individual and societal consequences of obedience or disobedience to it.
And though it wasn't in order chronologically, we moved from Mount Sinai to Mount Moriah. Glorious Mount Moriah! It was here where God prefigured His plan of redemption for men. We examined God's demand of the ultimate sacrifice, the faith He required, and the provision that He made. It was in this third lesson where the fullness of the Good News became most clear, because, of course, from Moriah we see Golgotha, where God's ultimate sacrifice, His Son Jesus, was offered and accepted for our benefit!
Our final peak was Mount Zion. That physical and spiritual locale from which Jesus will reign upon the earth and from which God will set up His eternal kingdom at the conclusion of the history of the earth as we know it. Upon David's kingship, God delivered the city of Jerusalem, which means the "City of God's Peace", also known as Mount Zion, to His people and He proclaimed this city to be His, and their, eternal habitation. His people will reign and rest with Him there and His enemies will be banished from His city and made to dwell in the place, not of peace, but of torment.
We praise God for the special time that we had during our camp. We pray for God to prepare the soil of the heart so that the good seed will take root and ultimately result in the harvest of a soul to His glory! And we invite you to consider those mountains of God through the intake of His Word. May you meet with Him there and may your soul be blessed!
"1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: 2 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, 3 and many peoples shall come, and say: 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem." (Isaiah 2:1-3)
Pastor Jeremy
