Hallelujah for Matthew 5:14, which says,
You are the light of the world. It is impossible for a city situated upon a mountain to be hidden.
This morning I was so impressed with the fact that we, as the church, are the city situated upon the mountain, shining! Several things about this “struck” me, as I was enjoying this verse and also reading some portions from the Crystallization-study of Isaiah, the morning revival on message 6, taken from the life-study of Matthew:
- A city situated upon a mountain cannot be hidden! We cannot live as “hidden Christians”, that is, no one around us knowing that we believe in the Lord and we love Him! If this were the case, then we need to desperately come to the Lord to be in His light, and be re-vitalized! One can see a city on a mountain even from afar… we CANNOT be hidden!
- It is not “a spiritual giant” who is shining, but “a city” – this implies that there is some building up going on! We need to be built up with the saints in our locality into the “shining city”, the miniature of the New Jerusalem! In this way, we shine! If we are not built up with the brothers and the sisters the Lord put us with, it is very unlikely that we are part of the “city” that shines! The city is a corporate thing, a builded city! We need to be built up more!
- Connecting this verse with Rev. 21:23-24 we see that we are the New Jerusalem today, but in “miniature” – God is actually the One who shines among us, and we don’t need any man-made or natural light. We are the components of the city, the ones built up together who are affording God a way to shine through us! By enjoying the Lord every day, allowing Him to shine in our whole being, we become transparent for Him: He can shine out through us firstly in our locality and then eventually to the whole universe!
- On the Mountaintop! It doesn’t say “a great city in a wide plain”! As we are being built up in God by enjoying Him personally, and as we are being built up together by enjoying the Lord together and praying with the saints, we are On The MountainTop! This is the high peak of God’s plan for us: the building up of His Body! When we’re being built, we become a great display of the riches of Christ worked into us through our many personal and corporate experiences with Him! The highest test of our spirituality and the highest virtue of our Christian life is not just us personally enjoying Christ and experiencing Him, but even more – being built up as His local expression, part of His universal Body!
Actually, to be built up with the fellow believers is the Lord’s supreme and highest requirement to His faithful seekers according to one of the divine attributes of the Divine Trinity – the oneness of the Divine Trinity, as seen in John 17.
Also, being built up with the fellow partakers of the divine life is the highest virtue of the one who pursues after Christ in God’s eternal economy (see The Secret of God’s Organic Salvation – the Spirit with our spirit). Lord, build us up in Your life more! Make us building ones, even building ones! Build us up as Your corporate expression in the place You put us, and as Your universal expression in the whole world!
[read this portion in Spanish via Somos la luz del mundo cuando somos edificados junto a los santos en nuestra localidad como la iglesia]
