A Mountain in Iowa?

By Rev.David Fleming

In my senior year I learned to love downhill skiing. As I toured a snow-covered college in Iowa, I blurted out a dumb question: “Is there any place to ski around here?”

The tour guide’s pretty face turned blank. “No. There are no mountains in Iowa. Everyone goes to Colorado.”

She was right about skiing, but wrong about Iowa. Every Sunday I found comfort and joy at a mountain right there in Iowa. God put that mountain there to help me, a poor, sinful college student.

St. John saw the same on a Sunday. The Lord revealed to Him what’s really going on in the Divine Service. The pews and altar become part of Mount Zion, where Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God, gathers His people to sing the new song. John saw the Lamb of God and the 144,000 baptized into His name together on Mount Zion.

Revelation often pictures Jesus as a Lamb. In chapter five John weeps because no one is worthy to open the scroll which contains the end of sin and death. But then the Lion of the tribe of Judah comes before the throne of God as a living, but slain Lamb. Only Christ crucified opens new life. Our Savior always is the sacrificed Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The Lamb leads His church. Jesus’ bride is arrayed as an army of 144,000. Numbers in Revelation are pictures (like Jesus’ seven eyes and seven horns in Rev. 5:6). 144,000 depicts the whole Christian Church on earth as a perfect army, 12,000 from each tribe (Rev. 7:4-8). Christ’s church daily battles Satan, the world’s way, and our own sin.

The Lamb meets with us at Mount Zion—God meets His people there to have mercy. In the Old Testament God met His people at the Tabernacle (“the tent of meeting”). They could always find God’s mercy there as sacrificed blood covered their sin. Finally, the Ark of the Covenant, the heart of the Tabernacle found a permanent home at the Temple on Mount Zion. The God-Man’s blood spilled for sin just on the outskirts of Zion.

Then, at the place of mercy in the presence of the God of mercy, John hears a voice from heaven, like many waters and thunder. In Rev. 1:15 Jesus’ voice sounded like many waters, and here (and in Rev. 19:6) the heavenly saints sound the same as the Savior. Even the church on earth echoes Christ’s voice.“He who hears you, hears Me” (Luke 10:16), Jesus told the ones He sent to preach. Christ preaches at faithful congregations. His voice baptizes, forgives, and makes bread and wine His body and blood at your church.

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel (Hebrews 12:22-24 NKJV).

John hears a song—a new song. It’s not new like so many products today which are “new and improved.” Even though it is as ancient as God’s first promise of Christ crushing Satan’s head, it is always made new, recreating, forgiving, and giving new life.

The old dirge of the world is the terrible toll of death’s domination: they lived, they died, they’re dead. Throughout history it’s always the same tragic song: they lived, they died, they’re dead. But Christ’s sacrifice sings victory over sin and its curse. He lived, He died, He’s alive so you live in Him.

Who gets to join in? Only the redeemed, only those who have been bought with the blood of the Lamb, only those baptized into Christ—living branches of the True Vine who still drink in His forgiveness—can learn the new song. Don’t expect the world to sing it. It’s fallen in love with the death dirge.

But through Jesus’ revelation to St. John, you see, you hear, and you join in the always new, always thundering song of Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away sin and gives life to you. He suffered, died, and now lives. Yes, I may suffer now, but I live in Him, too.

No matter how lonely or broken, sinful or tired you may feel, every Sunday Mount Zion comes to you hidden under pastor and people who don’t look or sound like much of an army. But God’s merciful mountain is there—in Iowa or wherever—when you’re gathered around the Lamb, singing the new song of heaven.

Rev. David Fleming is pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Then I looked, and behold, a Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of loud thunder. And I heard the sound of harpists playing their harps. They sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures, and the elders; and no one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth (Revelation 14:1-3 NKJV).