THE VIEW FROM PISGAH
J.D.Gray
Numbers 21: 4-20; Deuteronomy 3: 27; 34: 1-3; Philippians 3: 14, 20, 21
I trust the Lord helps to say something about the top of Pisgah. It is a very fine place to be, Pisgah. It comes into this section of the Scriptures. It is a mountain range, the young people would know that, it is just across the Jordan from Jericho. It seems from Scripture that all the children of Israel reached to the top of that mountain range. They went up Mount Nebo, that we read of, where Moses was taken up. It is one of the mountains in that range. I read chapter 3 of Deuteronomy just to show the young people that you can look northward, southward, eastward and westward from Pisgah. It is a wonderful view you get form Pisgah. When a man was going to curse the people of God in chapter 23 of Numbers, Balaam, God said to him, I will stop you cursing them, I will take you to a place where you will see what I think of them. So He took him up to the top of Pisgah and it says in chapter 23, “At this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!” (v.23). It is good to get a view of the saints from the divine viewpoint; it is good to get a view of things form God’s viewpoint. One word comes into this chapter, which is in verse 4 and also in verse 10, they journeyed, the children of Israel journeyed. Earlier on in their history in chapter 14 of Numbers, when they refused to accept the gospel of the glory and go into the land and take Hebron, God says to them there in Numbers 14, “And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness” (v.32). That is wandering.
I would like to speak something about the lessons of the wilderness, things we have to learn. Every believer has to learn them if they want to be in the pathway with the Lord; every believer who has put his body on the altar has to learn these exercises, come through them, somehow or other he has to come through them. It might seem, dear brethren, that we have wandered at times. I speak for myself, we have wandered in the wilderness, but when you get a view from Pisgah you do not see it like wanderings, you see that God’s hand has been over you all the way through. What a God we have that His presence goes with us. Where we have been diverted from the pathway we might say He still goes with us; He may not support us in it but He will go with us and help us. His ways are unsearchable, that is Romans 11. Paul comes to a doxology as he considers God’s ways with His earthly people, His ways too with the gentiles, His ways are unsearchable, “who has been his counsellor?”. There is a mind that is greater than the human mind; there is a God we have to do with, dear brethren, and His hand is over us.
Well, who gets to the top of Pisgah? What is this vantage point? It is a vantage point where you can look northward, southward, eastward and westward. You can look back and see the waste; you can look forward and see the land, see the saints in heaven. Who gets there? Well, the man who goes there is the man who has come through chapter 21 of Numbers. You say, that is figurative speech; it is, but I trust the Lord will help to show what we have had in the reading applies here, that is, these children of Israel had been journeying, they had been journeying for forty years. In some way, as I said already, in chapter 14 it was wandering, but the scripture also views it as journeying. They were about to move from mount Horeb and proceed to the Jordan, over mount Pisgah to the Jordan, but their relatives in the land of Edom, Esau’s children, would not allow them to pass through their land so they had to take a long journey down to the Red Sea again, go round the land of Edom. You can understand how people are tried, sometimes we are tried. The Lord tries us, tries us by circumstances; these people were tried by their circumstances. They journeyed from mount Horeb by way of the Red Sea to go round the land of Edom. They had to go all that journey round when they could have gone straight forward and crossed the neck of the land of Edom and gone up to the Jordan by a short way. Yet in the ways of God He had them go round the land of Edom and take this journey, which brought out the impatience in their soul. Sometimes God allows us to come into circumstances, I speak to older ones more than younger one, to bring out where we really are with God, what formation is taking place in me. The circumstances here brought out that inwardly, they said, why have you brought us out of Egypt forty years before? Why should we die in the wilderness? They had not died in the wilderness, they had been there for forty years. Then they said, “for there is no bread, and no water, and our soul loathes this light bread”. Inwardly there were still things unresolved; they still did not fully have a taste for Christ. What a state there was in their souls, but good results came from it because they came finally to the matter of the serpent’s bite. They came finally to understand, and you and I have to come to understand, that we have been the subject of the serpent’s bite. And the answer to that is Christ lifted up, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness thus must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”, John 3: 14,15. They finally came to it that there was something in them that could never respond to God’s ways, it had to be judged and maintained in its own place. You cannot get rid of sin in the flesh but you can judge it. “God, having sent his own Son, in likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, has condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8: 3), sin is condemned, it is not forgiven, He has condemned sin in the flesh. So these people come to that as a result of their history after a long protracted period. They had drunk of the Spirit, we might say, in their early days at the first smiting of the rock in Meribah, but they had not got the full gain of it. How like ourselves – we oscillate till finally we come to the fact that sin in the flesh remains and power is needed as we had in the reading, “I myself with the mind serve God’s law; but with the flesh sin’s law”, “who shall deliver me out of this body of death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”, Rom. 7: 24,25. You have to come to that, it is something to arrive at. I remember Mr. Lyon saying, Romans 7 is a long dark tunnel with a light at the end of it, and I often wondered about that. Mr. Lyon was a brother who lived many years ago, a worthy among the saints at that time, and I often thought how he could say that, how he could not get through it. But finally, these people come to it. It say again, God allows circumstances in our histories to bring us to really bottom things. I think what was said today, we can go too fast, there is a measure of truth in that. We have to build on a foundation like the house that is built upon a rock not upon the sand. We can acquire knowledge only and disaster may come as it did in the history of the people of Israel.
After this they journey again and they are really drinking into the Holy Spirit; “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”, Rom 8: 14. What rapidity of movement. I read the chapter just to bring that out in the literal sense and to show how it applies spiritually. There is rapidity of movement with a person. We need to judge the flesh, and drink into the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit becomes a power in you. You need power, you need strength – that is true physically, it is true spiritually, to get to this viewpoint, to have God’s viewpoint. What a difference it makes when you get God’s viewpoint. Now you look over the whole book of Numbers from Pisgah, “which looks over the surface of the waste”. You look back: for the young people I say, you can look back to the Red Sea. Pisgah is near the land of Canaan, just across the river Jordan, it is thousands of feet high, and you look back to the Red Sea and say, God brought us out of Egypt, He delivered me from the sin system; He brought me across the Red Sea. I remember singing, ‘O happy day when Jesus washed my sins away’, remember singing at the banks of the Red Sea? We all remember that I trust, the song of redemption. Then the grace of God that met me, fed me with Christ, then I learned and I went through my history. You did not like Christ all the time, there was a mixed condition in you.
Then there are other exercises that come up. I wanted to refer to one or two of these exercises, exercises that have to be learned on the way, wilderness exercises; not only personal wilderness exercises but assembly wilderness exercises that come into our history. I say again to the young people, we have all to come this way. The book of Numbers is typical of the believer’s pathway through the wilderness not only individually but also in relation to the walk with the saints. I refer to Numbers 12 because it is a scripture that was borne home to me in recent time, the speaking of the Son; it says there that Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses on the pretext that it was because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had taken for his wife. Then Jehovah heard it (v.3). The man Moses was very meek. Then Jehovah spoke suddenly (v.4), and called Moses and Aaron and Miriam, “Come out ye three unto the tent of meeting”. And then later down Jehovah says, “Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I Jehovah will make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak to him in a dream. Not so my servant Moses: he is faithful in all my house” (v.6). That is typical teaching of who is over the house. Hebrews 3 brings out the Son is over the house. Hebrews is a remarkable book, we have read part of it today, God speaking in Son; in former times He spoke another way now He is speaking in Son, the Son is over the house and His words have to be adhered to – the faithful speaking of the Son. He has made the laws of the house; He has it laid down for us in Scripture. I have thought much about this that the Son is over the house and we have to pay heed to that. In ministry it is said by extension the apostles, that would be right too, because they carry authority from the Son, because the apostles’ writing is all in Scripture and by extension ministers who have ministered to us the truth. We have to minister the truth that is in accordance with the Son over the house, the law of the house. You cannot eliminate Scripture. I have thought of it much in relation to the disaster that struck us thirty years ago when a certain verse of Scripture was set aside. It led to disaster. It put us on sectarian ground – it led to disaster. The Son over God’s house stands. Every speaking must be in accordance with His thought; He is over the house, He rules in the house, He has the last word. The Son of God has the last word and it is down in Scripture for us. Others have helped us to understand it and we are thankful for that, but the speaking must be in accordance with the Son. We were seduced into following something that was not in accordance with the Son of God. I say that to us in all sobriety that we may be preserved from anything toward that, setting aside Scripture the Son of God has indicted.
So in Numbers 13, just to touch on that, the gospel of the glory is brought to them. The spies go and search out the land of promise and they come back and say, It is a good land, the cities are good and everything is good, but the cities have walls and they are built up to the heavens and the men are giants. They would not go in, they were not prepared to go and attack those situations in the power of the Spirit of God and overthrow them. Companies who were holding divine ground, you might say, but not according to the divine mind. You will meet in your pathway believers that will say, Yes, the saints gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus are right, but I am not able for that. We can thank God for those who have staked out the ground. We have not staked out the ground, that has been done for us. Men who established things as coming out from the systems in the power of the name of the Lord Jesus, have gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus, have done it for us. We have to hold that ground. You can see later on in the history of the children of Israel how they came to take that ground because they came another way; they followed that ark through the Jordan. Affection for Christ took them into the land and there the Spirit of God helped them. So that in our histories we come alongside persons who acknowledge that the ground of gathering may be right, but they are not prepared for it. Are you prepared for it? Am I prepared for it, to maintain the truth that has been established for us and the ground of gathering that has been maintained for us? And then again in chapter 16, which we touched on in the reading, where the two hundred and fifty princes of Israel seek to assert themselves above the people of Israel and establish the priesthood to themselves that was not according to God. That is the clerical system, that is where really the Spirit of God is quenched. The sin against the Holy Spirit, As Mr. Darby wrote in his booklet, is the clerical system. Have we really judged that? You get upset and sorrow fills your heart when brethren that once walked with us go back to that system, go back to the recognition of clergy and laity where the Spirit of God has not free course. The Lord in His goodness may give a word through a godly minister, we would not set that aside, but have we really judged the system? We have to face up to these things in our lifetime whether we have really judged them or not. Circumstances arise that test you. Will I go back to that or am I committed to where the Lord has placed His name and where faithfulness to the truth has been enlightened to me. And then in chapter 17 you find the answer to everything, the answer to the sons of rebellion; the children of Israel, they had to take their twelve staves and put them in the tent of meeting and God says, I will show you the man I have chosen. And Levi’s staff brought forth buds, and blossoms, and ripened almonds. One Man lives before God; Christ alone lives. Life is in Christ, it is inherent in Him; He is the Man before God, Christ in resurrection, Christ in glory, He is the Man that God has chosen, not us in that sense; not any of the other staves of Israel, but Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ. Is that the Man I prefer to all others? What a glorious Man He is. At the end of David’s life when David died, scripture speaks about the times that passed over David, that passed over Israel, that passed over the nations (see 1 Chron. 29: 30). What times have passed over us. What has been the result of all this faithfulness? I will say something to you; pick up a hymn book of 1903, that is when Mr. Raven was alive and Mr. Darby’s day went before that, and pick up the hymn book we have now and go over it and you will find the precious truth that has been unfolded to us between those two times. What has been the reward for faithfulness in the wilderness? The reward is the preciousness of the privilege of remembering the Lord Jesus and moving thereafter into the area of privilege. Where else in Christendom would you get that? We gather to the name of the Lord Jesus, we celebrate His Supper, “we being assembled to break bread” (Acts 20: 7); it seems simple to us, we are used to it, but you know in times gone past the brethren gathered in the light they had and very faithful and very sincere and God honoured it. Do not get me wrong, God honoured it. They wept and the floors were wet with tears of the saints. God honoured that and then they broke bread, but they did not have too much of going into the area of privilege. I do not say they did not touch it, that would be wrong of me to say that, the Lord is very gracious unto His saints. I am sure He gave them a sense of His presence but it was not expanded. But the faithfulness of those who have gone before us has brought about a reward for us in the richness of the divine service. So that we are instructed, “we being assembled to break bread”, we break bread immediately.
Then what flows out, the Lord coming in, in all His glory and dignity as the firstborn from among the dead, firstborn among many brethren. Then the light as to His joy in His assembly; then the light as to the worship of the Spirit, which came into chapter 21 of Numbers, “Rise up, well! Sing unto it!”; then the light of the service of God to the Father. Can we enter into it in spirit, dear brethren, touch an area that is beyond responsibility? What a reward for faithfulness. You can see how the exercise of the wilderness is gone through and gone through rightly, something arrived at in our souls. That is what the Lord has put in my heart, to ensure that the truth we have is formed in me in a manner that nothing will move it – the rock is there, nothing is going to move it, it will stand as I keep near to the Spirit of God it will not be overthrown. And then all these wonderful privileges that come in.
That is what I had in mind to speak to you about, to encourage you. Moses sees the saints in the land; I just read it to link with Philippians. Moses gets a view of the saints in the land. What a viewpoint! You go round this country and you see viewpoints; you stand and see the glories, not exactly of man’s doing but glories of creation. You say, God made all this land; you stand at pinnacles and mountaintops or viewpoints, (some of us have to drive there by car), when we get there we view the viewpoints, see the creation, see the scenery. Here Moses is looking upward seeing the saints in heaven. I think Paul in Philippians had that view. He sees them all. God showed them to Moses from the top of Pisgah. Get up to Pisgah, dear brethren, see the saints from another viewpoint. I sometimes say it is good to fly thirty-nine thousand feet high, when you see the land you see it in a different perspective. In some ways it appeals to me as God’s perspective. Petty murmurings among the brethren mean nothing, they do not mean anything. How people carry on among the brethren mean nothing, they do not mean anything. How people carry on with petty things I do not understand, it is beyond me. Clans in Scotland carry on fights from one generation to another generation, that is beyond me. You go up there and you see it all in perspective; puny man down there, but God’s viewpoint of the saints, “What hath God wrought!” Is it worthwhile maintaining disagreements amongst us? It is not worth it. It is not worth it, dear brethren, it is better to use the death of Christ to maintain reconciliation and get up to the heights of Pisgah. Get a view of those persons, get a view of the saints from that viewpoint and you say, “What hath God wrought!” He has wrought in my brother and wrought in my sister, He has wrought in me. Oh, to see the saints that way, the whole landscape changes completely. Down in the valleys in that sense, there they are bickering and disagreeing, poor puny brother or sister, to continue feuds from one generation to another, never any sign of termination. Get up above and see the saints; see that person from the heights, God has wrought in their soul. There is a work of God there that is going to shine in the day to come. Paul says that in the Philippian epistle, he says he has a hope, the hope of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus. What a hope to have. How it lifts the spirit, lifts the viewpoint. Elevation – elevation helps in local matters to get a viewpoint, the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus. It may be the end of the way. Mr. Darby says salvation in Philippians is the end of the road, but you have always got a view of it. “For the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus”. What a prize it is; it maintains your outlook heavenly. Then it says, “our commonwealth has its existence in the heaven”. If my commonwealth has its existence in the heavens I want to live there, I want to view the saints from that point of view, I want to be on the top of Pisgah as a man who has judged himself, a man who is walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. If you are not able to get up to the top of that viewpoint there is defect in your own soul, but it is available to you in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit to be able to rise from the circumstances where they were impatient on the way, and ascend. What rapidity they ascended with. You know, young people, the way they went, the children of Israel, it was uphill and down dale and uphill till they got to the top of that range, thousands of feet; all that host, two and one half million, getting to the top of Pisgah and from there looking over the whole surface of the waste. What a change it makes. You can see God’s hand in the way He has brought you, brought individually; trace God’s ways with you and something will be wrought out. Maybe my ways have not always been in accordance with the truth but God has brought me that way and formed me. He has used my history to form me after Christ. It is the hand of a Person who has a mind greater than the human mind who can turn disasters into profit. He does not justify our disasters but He can turn them into profit and He can form us. You look back and He might say, I could not have taken you another way; I wanted to form something in you that I brought you that way. That is my understanding of the view of the top of Pisgah; it eliminates the wandering side and brings out the side of the unsearchable ways of God. He says, I have something in mind to form you, I could not form you any other way. I had to bring you that way because I wanted to form some particular feature of Christ in you. What a God we have to do with, dear brethren – what a God, He would encourage us. So he says, “our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens, from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory”. Oh, to be in a body where sin is not. What a statement, dear brethren, what a statement, to be in a body where sin is not; “conformity to his body of glory”. He is going to give us a house from heaven; He is going to give us a body of glory. You know sin will not dwell in its members. We are in a body of humiliation that is because sin dwells in our members; we have to be on constant guard and watching. It says in Numbers 23 it is the watchmen’s field, we have to be on our watch always by the Holy Spirit and guarded. What a prospect to have a body in which sin is not. That is the portion of every true believer. The Lord Jesus is the power, it says, “according to the working of the power which he has even to subdue all things to himself”. He is going to subdue everything to Himself. Thank God He has subdued you and me and brought us into subjection to Himself, the Christ. How blessed to be a person who is in subjection to the Christ.
Well, I trust these few words will stimulate a measure of exercise in our hearts and souls, give us encouragement to see there is a viewpoint for one who has judged himself and who seeks to walk in the power of the Spirit to ascend to a point where he can view the whole history of himself and his brethren from the divine viewpoint where everything else is nullified. He gets a view of the saints as those in whom God has wrought and there is preciousness there that is going to be housed with a house from heaven and, as this scripture says, have a body of glory. May the Lord bless us for His Name’s sake.
New York
October 2000