Your position, according to the dictionary, is the place you are located in relation to the things and people about you. The Bible has a huge amount to say about our ‘position’. Essentially, God delights when people are positioned in a place of freedom, opportunity, faith and blessing. The Bible uses pictures of trees planted by a river, quarry stones placed in a great temple, jewels set in a crown, arrows in the hand of a great warrior, beggars lifted from a ash heap and placed on a throne … the list is endless. It’s position that’s being declared when we are either dead in sin or raised up and seated in heavenly places with Christ.

Position is determined by decisions: our responses to the grace of God. And it’s determined by attitude: the habits of thought we embrace. These can keep us ‘lifted’ or ‘slumped’ … a victor or a victim.

God wants us to know where we are, and where we are not! In the letter to the Hebrews we are presented with two famous mountains, which since New Testament times began, are symbols or metaphors of spiritual locations where an individual believer, or a local church, might position themselves.

‘For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire (this is speaking of  Mount Sinai where Israel received the Law, NB: Exodus 20:18-26) . . . But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels’. (Hebrews 12:18 – 24) 

Sinai represents a place of having to obey requirements, a place where boundaries and limitations are set, and a place where God is someone of whom you’re afraid . . . NOT the position for a people alive in the Spirit.

Zion is just the opposite: a place where our life is not regulated by law, but by the presence of God with whom we’ve entered a love relationship … ‘the love of Christ compels us’ (2 Corinthians 5:14). Zion, therefore, is where God wants us positioned, and there are three things that make Zion unique, three ‘firsts’ - not found in any previous dwelling place of God in Israel. It is the presence of these three things in our lives, and in the church, that position us for all that God has in store for us to enter.

For the first time in a dwelling place of the Lord the sound of praise and worship was to be heard. David appointed musicians and singers, assembled choirs, and caused the whole nation to rejoice with singing, dancing, shouting and skilful instrumentation (1 Chronicles 15:1-28). There has been an ever increasing phenomena of Spirit-filled and glorious praise and worship in the Church around the world for the past sixty years. It’s not a time to become familiar and complacent, but to ‘make his praise glorious’ (Psalm 66:2).

It is also interesting to note that Zion was the last place in the promised land to be possessed by Israel. Worship and the truths of Zion are the great final (end-time) possession of the Church. There are awesome atmospheres of the power and presence of God for the Church to experience.

In addition to worship, for the first time in a dwelling place of the Lord a King was the superintendent of the worship and service (1 Chronicles 16:1-7). Anyone other than one from the tribe of priests would have lost their lives coming near to make offerings in the earlier Tabernacle of Moses (Numbers 3:10), but here God makes an exception and allows King David from the tribe of Judah to preside.

More references to God reigning on Zion than for any other dwelling place: Zion was a place for kings. It’s where we are made ‘Kings’ … people who carry the same authority and power as the ‘King of kings’. We come to be part of a victorious people, reigning in life and extending the influence of God in the world.

Finally, Zion was a place of dreaming; for the first time in a dwelling place of the Lord the next one was being envisaged. David dreamed of a greater dwelling place, a place of greater glory, and did everything in his power to prepare for it (1 Chronicles 22:1-5). As wonderful as the worship, the reign of David and the presence of God was in Zion … it was only ever temporary (a tent) – there was more to come, and that attitude pervades the heart of those who have come to Zion; there’s no settling down, no thought of having ‘made it’. Never satisfied. Always hungry. Always being in preparation. Always anticipating a more magnificent manifestation of God.

You have come to Zion. You have been created to worship, to reign and to have a dream. This where we position ourselves for greater freedom, opportunity, faith and blessing.

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