Great Mountains

Published by Ben Stahl on February 17, 2020February 17, 2020

“Thy righteousness is like the great mountains, thy judgments are a great deep…” Psalm 36:6

If you were to head South on a clear day on I-5 in Oregon, well before you reached the California border, a distant shape would make an appearance in front of you. At first it might seem like only a distant cloud or perhaps the shadow of a hill. But as the miles pass the shape will remain and it will become clear that this is not merely a cloud or a hill but rather a great mountain. Mt Shasta in Northern California reaches 14,179 feet above sea level to sit, many days, well into the clouds. It is a unique mountain not for its height, which is shared by many other mountains in the United States, but by its size and prominence.

If you were to travel to the base camp of Mt. Everest in Nepal, famous in movies for its many flags, tents, supplies, monuments, and even trash, you could look up at the world’s highest summit some 11,429 feet above you. Nearby Mt. Shasta in Northern, CA is the town of

 Reading, CA. With an elevation less than 600 feet above sea level, residents and tourists must stretch their necks more than those at Everest base camp as they look more than 2 miles and 13,500 feet into the sky to glimpse the summit of Mt. Shasta.

Planning a climb of Mt. Shasta leads to many great route options. One could climb the mountain more than half a dozen times and never take the same route to the summit. While climbing the mountain, you will reach sections where you think you are nearing the summit only to find the true summit lies beyond the crest you just expended great effort and time to reach. With the thighs burning, the heart pumping, the cold biting, and the time passing, it can be easy to think about quitting the climb and returning the thousands of vertical feet and many miles to civilization. However, when the summit is reached, and the months of planning and perhaps days of climbing are rewarded with success, all of the work seems very much worth it. While holding on to the rocky summit, you can look in all directions and see massive glaciers, subsidiary peaks, ridges and gullies without number and at that point, perhaps Psalm 36 will come to mind: “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains…”

To say the Psalms are profound would be a great understatement, something of a cliche, and an incomplete description, but it would also be true. The Psalms provide depth and insight into the Lord and His ways that no man can fully comprehend or understand (profound).

One of the ways the Lord assists us in understanding His attributes revealed in the Psalms is by making comparisons to objects in His creation. For example, in Psalm 57, “Your mercy reaches unto the heavens, your truth unto the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; Let your glory be above all the earth.” (NKJV) The Lord is certainly not saying His mercy stops in the Heavens but rather He compares His mercy to that which we can see but cannot measure. We can see the Heavens but who has measured them? The mercy of the Lord reaches into the heavens! When you contemplate the mercy of the Lord that endures forever, look into the heavens. God’s mercy extends beyond those heavens and His exaltation is higher than all the stars.

In Psalm 36:6, God’s righteousness is revealed to be like the great mountains. Having spent the last 12 years of my life living in Georgia, my family has enjoyed many Saturdays hiking in the North Georgia Mountains and along the Appalachian Trail. While there are many rocky outcroppings along these trails where we can see great distances and even a few places that we need to watch our steps to keep from falling, in comparison to the mountains of the Western United States, the mountains of Georgia are but little mountains. The righteousness of God is not like little mountains, it is like the great mountains!

Why does the Lord give this picture of great mountains for His righteousness? Unlike the volume, height, breadth, and width of a mountain, no man can measure the same for the righteousness of the Lord. Why? Because the Lord Himself is righteousness. So why the comparison at all?

1) A great mountain can be climbed, explored, experienced, studied, and mapped for many years. At the end of those years one has only had a taste for the mountain. So the righteousness of the Lord which is revealed to us in the Scriptures may be studied, kept, and hid in the heart for many years until it is known truthfully, but even then, the righteousness of God is known in just a small part. We can only but taste of the righteousness of God for He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable and we are finite, mortal, and malleable, but we can taste and we must taste and the Lord shall fill us with His righteousness (Matthew 5:6)!

2) Great mountains are, well, great. They are remarkable in magnitude and prominence. They cannot be easily moved. The righteousness of the Lord is very great. In magnitude, the righteousness of God is perfect. God is never mostly righteous, He is perfectly righteous in every way, in every action, in every commandment, and in every judgment. As to stability, the righteousness of God is unchanging and unmoving. Through all the shifting sands of man’s ideas and teaching, the righteousness of God remains the same. As to prominence, the righteousness of God stands above all other ideas of righteousness. As to importance and value, it is only the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by which a man might be accepted as righteous in the sight of God and find entrance into the Kingdom of God. As to access, the righteousness of God is revealed for all to see and learn in the Scripture. The righteousness of the Lord is very great. 

As we seek first the righteousness of God and consider His righteous Word in the weeks ahead, let us proclaim with the Psalmist, “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains”!