THE PURPOSE OF GOD
Psalm 87:1-7; Psalm 1221-9;
Nehemiah 2:18 (from “Let us”)
Zion and Jerusalem are among the most attractive themes in the Scriptures. Indeed Zion is called “Beautiful in elevation … on the sides of the north, the city of the great King”, Ps.48:2. And “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined forth”, Ps.50:2. He has shone forth for the expression of His heart of love, for the display of His sovereign mercy and His kindness towards us. How very wonderful that is. God loves what the gates of Zion represent, which is entry into His purpose, and wishes that each of us should enter through them; “This one and that one was born in her”. I would say to the young people here who are believers: prize the fact that you have a birthright in Zion, that you have your spiritual origins in the purpose of God, and that you were born there. It is a place of wonderful assurance, for the purpose of God can never be altered. We live in a world of confusion and toil and uproar. There is brutal savagery in some parts of the world, but God says, “Behold, I lay for foundation in Zion a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation: he that trusteth shall not make haste”, Isa.28:16. What an anchor for your heart.
Who is the corner stone? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. “For other foundation can no man lay besides that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”, 1 Cor.3:11. He is the sure foundation on whom we place our trust. “Why are the nations in tumultuous agitation …?” (Ps.2:1); what is the answer to that? “And I have anointed my king upon Zion, the hill of my holiness” (v.6). Wonderful thing! “I will declare the decree” (v.7); a decree that is irrevocable. Politicians may make their laws and issue decrees, but they can easily be broken or changed. But God’s decree is immutable, never to be broken. Prize therefore your birthright in Zion.
Men around us make their claims: “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon among them that know me; behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia: this man was born there”. But their fame quickly dissipates and they fade away. They may have a place in history, but the Lord Jesus is living and your links with Him can never be broken because He lives at the right hand of God for evermore. “And of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one was born in her; and the Most High himself shall establish her”. It is a wonderful fact that as a believer, you have your place in the purpose of God that can never be interfered with. “Jehovah will count, when he inscribeth the peoples, This man was born there”. That is a reference to the Lord Jesus; Jerusalem is His city. He is the beginning of everything that is for the pleasure of God. And we have our origins in Zion because He was there before. “Jehovah will count, when he inscribeth the peoples …”; if you have placed your trust in Him, He will write you up.
There was a lame man in Acts and he was placed every day at the gate of the temple called Beautiful (Acts 3:2). I suppose it was called ‘Beautiful’ as that was what it appeared to be outwardly. Like men’s systems, it was perhaps externally and superficially attractive, but it had nothing of substance. The Beautiful gate of the temple could do nothing for that lame man, “who was lame from his mother’s womb”. He sat day after day, begging for alms. O, the beggarly principles of the world, providing no lasting satisfaction. But the man was put in touch with One, Jesus, who would heal him: Peter said it was “by faith in his name, his name has made this man strong” (v.16). When he was healed, he went into the temple with Peter and John, and in spirit he entered the gates of Zion, gates of a different type: he entered in through the gates of Zion “walking, and leaping, and praising God” (v.8). He was one, I suppose, who could say, “As well the singers as the dancers shall say, All my springs are in thee”.
Are your springs in Zion? Are you deriving your life, your joy, your happiness and your satisfaction from a source which can never dry up? There this man was, holding on to Peter and John. What a change, what a revolution in that man! What will God say about that man when He writes him up? The Authorised Version says, ‘writes up the peoples’. God would describe each one – what they are, their origins, perhaps, what they were before they met the Lord Jesus Christ. But now they are citizens of Zion. That is their residence; what a place to reside, in Zion itself!
What will be said about you? Are you in Zion’s register? Are you in Zion’s census? Born in Zion; how fine that is! Have your name written there, inscribed with ‘Born in Zion’ alongside it. How very wonderful to be in the divine register. Do you know it? There were those in the Old Testament who were of Jerusalem, but they wandered away, they departed from the way that was right but they sought to come back and there is a wonderful scripture in Jeremiah that says, “They shall inquire concerning Zion, with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to Jehovah”, Jer.50:5. You can see them thinking of the peaks of Zion and saying, I want to be back there!
Is there a heart here that is weary and wants to return to Zion? Zion’s gates are open, through the mercy of God. I love the opening chapters in Ephesians, the high point of Christian truth, Christian satisfaction and Christian experience. But like lustrous jewels, there shine out the words, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences”, Eph.1:7. That is the basis of it all and then it says in the next chapter that “God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love wherewith he loved us …” (chap.2:4). What a jewel, sparkling in that wonderful treasury, you might say. “God, being rich in mercy” – that is Zion, the sovereign mercy of God. When we were lost, He reached down and claimed us for Himself. It says in the psalm we read, “As well the singers as the dancers shall say, All my springs are in thee”.
Where are we finding our lives? Is it in some place that might give you some ephemeral, some temporary satisfaction? “All my springs are in thee”: that is you derive everything of joy and happiness from that place, from Zion. It is not a doleful or a dismal or a depressing place. There is dancing, there are singers. What could be more satisfying to the spiritually attuned soul than the spiritual singing and dancing in these heavenly places. Zion gives you that. God “loveth the gates of Zion”. He would love each of us to enter freshly through those wide open gates today, opened by the work of Christ.
Then too we have Jerusalem. Zion is really enshrined in Jerusalem. What a place Jerusalem is. The earthly Jerusalem is steeped in spiritual history, but what a history too of departure and despondency. The Lord Jesus, when for the last time He entered Jerusalem, wept: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those that are sent unto her, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen her brood under her wings, and ye would not”, Luke 13:34. Think of the tender compassion of the Lord Jesus, the intensity of His feelings, for a Jerusalem that had rejected His overtures of grace. He wept over it. He wept over the grave of Lazarus – what a sorrowful thing that was – as He considered the awful impact of sin on the human race. Yet then the particular anguish as He wept over Jerusalem, that city so dear to the divine affections but which had rejected Him and the divine overtures of grace and compassion.
Think of the appeal! After three and a half years of public service, you would have thought that there might have been some glad return of affection for the Lord Jesus in response to His desires. But how lacking the response was. He came into Jerusalem and wept, then He went out of it bearing a cross. That was the callous verdict of man, of Jerusalem as it was then, to the Lord of life and glory. He had gone through all quarters doing good and healing those oppressed by the devil because God was with Him but Jerusalem, with all its presumption, with all its religious arrogance and pride, failed to accommodate Him , but instead gave Him a cross, and He went out bearing it. How awful that was.
But His work was accomplished and hope is not extinguished. In this great dispensation of God’s grace, we have come to a heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God (Heb.12:22). How is it possible? It is because of the work of Jesus at Calvary. You can read in 2 Samuel 5 about how David went up to Jerusalem and took the stronghold of Zion and called it the city of David. It is a type of the Lord Jesus overcoming the enemy’s power. Now He is building from the Millo round about and inward (v.9); that is, having won the victory, He is captivating hearts and affections that they might be for Him. He is building stone by stone, you might say, a structure within your heart and within mine that will be for His pleasure and for His glory eternally.
Are you conscious of the divine building round about from the Millo and inward? It is inward building so that there might not only be an outward response to Him but an answer that comes from the hearts of those who love Him. Are you conscious of God building, of the Lord Jesus building, in your heart? He is doing that by His own work. We are His divine workmanship, and stone by stone, He is establishing a structure in our hearts which will be for God’s glory eternally.
So “Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem”. There is an appeal in that! What a privilege to “stand within thy gates”. You enter in through the gates of Zion, and then you stand within the gates of Jerusalem. It involves the richness of the blessing of assembly privileges, for Jerusalem represents the assembly in our day. I came across a remark of Mr Taylor’s in which he said, ‘Every divine thought found a home in the bosom of the assembly at the beginning’1.. What a remarkable expression! But then breakdown came in, and although every divine thought is still cherished in the assembly, publicly the testimony is in ruins. But there is an appeal of the prophet, “let Jerusalem come into your mind”, Jer.51:50. That is, we are to be concerned about Jerusalem, that there might be a response to God. It is a matter to be held in the believer’s mind so as to have our mind “on the things that are above” (Col.3:2), where the Lord Jesus is, and all that pertains to Him and His interests in the present day.
We read about Nehemiah who said, “but I told no man what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem”, Neh.2:12. So the prosperity of Jerusalem in the affections and hearts of believers is both a mind and a heart matter. To make it so, you need to have some perception of the grand design of what God has in mind, and to see things from the divine perspective. We are inclined to be a bit narrow in our minds, overwhelmed perhaps by the breakdown in Christendom at large, of which we are part, and all that is in opposition to the great thoughts of God. But we are to have our minds focused on these grand divine blessings, and the Ephesian epistle amplifies that.
Daniel was one person whose mind and whose heart were focused on Jerusalem. There he was in the most painful circumstances, held captive in Babylon, so far from Jerusalem, but when the writing was signed and he was due to be cast to the lions, what did he do? “And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and, his windows being open in his upper chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled on his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime”, Dan.6:10. His “windows being open” – it was as if he wanted to breathe the atmosphere of Jerusalem. All his senses were exercised in relation to Jerusalem on account of habit, because that was his habit. Three times a day he took to pray about the matters concerning Jerusalem, speaking, in our day, of the prosperity of the testimony.
What a devoted servant of God Daniel was, and I think in the eyes of his heart, he would recapture the vision of Jerusalem as it was in all its grandeur in the days of David and Solomon. He would recall the ark being brought into its place, that great climactic moment, for he would know about it. He was not there, of course, at the time, but Daniel would have known about these things, such as the trumpeters and singers being as one in Solomon’s time (2 Chron.5:13) to make one voice to be heard. His hearing, his sight, his vision, his taste and all his senses would be exercised in relation to Jerusalem, and he would have God’s view of it, and he would pray. Would he not pray for the peace of Jerusalem? Would he forget Jerusalem? Not he! He would pray for Jerusalem. He would pray for peace and he would pray for a day when again his feet would stand within the gates of Jerusalem. How rewarding it is to look at things from the divine perspective and beyond failure.
We tend to become a bit discouraged and dismayed by the conditions of breakdown and opposition and adversity around us and in our circumstances. But God would quicken our affections and give us that exalted picture of what Jerusalem in principle means to God, what it means to the heart of Christ, to help us commit ourselves in the power of the Spirit to be actively sympathetic with God as to His people. Have we the conviction and the commitment to do something for Jerusalem? He may put something in your heart and my heart to do something for Jerusalem by way of building up, perhaps by way of contribution to the welfare of the local assembly. These are glorious objectives, how very constructive they are.
Nehemiah was one like that. He came to Jerusalem and the gates were burned with fire and the walls were in ruins. The stones of the walls might be taken to represent divine principles, a very necessary component of believers’ lives, for it was said, “thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise”, Isa.60:18. Walls are necessary for the welfare of Jerusalem, but here the walls were in ruins. But the principles never alter, and so the stones remained. They may need to be cleaned up a bit and they may need to be re-established and re-asserted in our affections and in our hearts, but divine principles stand.
But the gates had been burned with fire. There is delightful touch earlier in chapter 2 of Nehemiah, before he came to Jerusalem, when he asked for “a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates …”, Neh.2:8. It is as if the people needed some revival, some fresh impression of the glory of the Lord Jesus: “timber to make beams for the gates”. The timber gives us some impression of the cedar, speaking of the majesty of Christ; some impression of the olive wood, representing the power of the Holy Spirit. Then the mighty oak cannot be overturned. And Solomon speaks about “the hyssop that springs out of the wall” (1 Kings 4:33), in its smallness a figure of the humility of the Lord Jesus in His pathway here.
So all the timber was necessary for the gates, for they had been burned with fire, and the rebuilding of the gates depended on the timber. That surely means a fresh and greater appreciation of the Lord Jesus in our hearts. How does that happen? By communion with Him, by going into His presence and learning more about this blessed Saviour of ours, this Man of the Father’s choice. How great and how glorious He is! And so the gates are rebuilt and how very grand that is.
Time is too short to go into each of these gates but there are three that are very significant. The first is the sheep-gate. How gratifying to think of the meaning of the sheep-gate – the way in which divine grace has operated to secure us through the great Shepherd of the sheep. He is the door of the sheep; “if any one enter in by me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out and shall find pasture” (John 10:9). O, enter in by the Saviour, the door of the sheep. He will lead you into what Jerusalem speaks of, its privileges and its blessings.
Then there is the fish-gate, often referred to as representing divine sovereignty – the way God has operated in His mercy to secure believers for His pleasure. One of the important things about fish, as we read about them in the Old Testament, is that they have both fins and the scales (Lev.11:9). We need fins to propel us forward and we need scales to protect us from adversity and the attacks and the thrusts of the enemy, and then we can swim. It has been said that a good Roman fish swims easily into Ephesian waters, and I suppose that is right. The fins and scales are in operation, and you go in and you find your home in the comfort and safety of Jerusalem.
And then there is the fountain-gate too – what we find by way of refreshment in the power of the Holy Spirit, necessary to our enjoyment of our inheritance (Eph.1:14), the resource for our enjoyment of life in Jerusalem. How very affecting and how attractive it is! Thus how important the gates are.
So the wall was dedicated and on it, each choir went round. The wall must have been broad enough to accommodate each choir. The wall speaks of protection and separation, but it is not a doleful thing, it is the way to blessing. You can see how the meaning of the wall, the principles of protection and separation, is so closely linked with the service of God rightly conducted. The Lord’s supper, that wonderful expression of Christian fellowship, is, we might say, the entrance into the service of God. The breaking of bread is the divinely appointed expression of Christian fellowship, and the basis for Christian fellowship is represented by the gates into the city with all its privileges. How important therefore the Lord’s supper is. And so each choir went round and most interestingly, the instruments of David were used. Nothing of the truths of Christianity to which believers have been recovered is lost – nothing. Outwardly there may be despair, darkness and gloom, but within the city there is nothing lost. What the instruments of David represent – liberty and variety in the service of God – are still available. May our hearts be encouraged by that.
Just to touch on Psalm 122, it says that Jerusalem is “built as a city that is compact together”. That means that we are joined together in unity, but being compact together would suggest we are as one in principle and in practice. That is testing but it is encouraging. “Whither the tribes go up” again indicates that all go up in unison and harmony. Then it says, “For there are set thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David”; it is not just one throne, and thus it would represent the authority of Christ in every local assembly, so that all, as it were, have the same direction, all follow the same principles. Paul could say “thus I ordain in all the assemblies”, 1 Cor.7:17. That is, there is no divergence in principle and practice from one assembly to the other.
And then, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee”. We have prayer meetings and how fine it is to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that brethren may be kept together in the “unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace”, Eph.4:3. There is that wonderful response heavenward and mutual satisfaction in the great things of God, and “they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy bulwarks, prosperity within thy palaces”. That is like Zion too. It says that we are to walk about Zion; “Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces”, Ps.48:13. Be at liberty there, walk about it, explore the spiritual geography of Zion and Jerusalem, mark her towers, “count the towers thereof” (v,12).
There are some immutable2 towers in Christianity. Forgiveness of sins is a tower, it can never be impacted upon. Justification, reconciliation, all these divine principles are towers that rise up and can never be undermined. Why? Because their foundations are in the mountains of holiness. These things are wonderful, glorious and rooted in the purpose of God. Then “consider her palaces”. You are introduced into royal things, “All glorious is the king’s daughter within” (Ps.45:13); that is within the royal apartments3. These things are very attractive. “For my brethren and companions’ sakes I will say, Peace be within thee!”. What a lovely exhortation!
May our hearts be encouraged to have a sense of that settled peace which Christ leaves, “I leave peace with you; I give my peace to you”, John 14:27. The peace He enjoyed in His Father’s company, He left with us. One often thinks of these relationships which the Lord Jesus
enjoyed with His Father, these nights spent abroad on the Mount of Olives in holy, joyful communion with His Father; “I knew that thou always hearest me”, John 11:42.
May our hearts be encouraged by these thoughts – their attractiveness, the beauty of Jerusalem and Zion. We look forward, and we had a reference to it in the reading, to the day when the holy city Jerusalem will come down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband and it speaks there about a great and high wall. There will be no gaps in that wall! And then the gates too, each of one pearl, each one reflecting the assembly which in turn would reflect Christ Himself and His blessed work. Then the dimensions are given. Mr Alfred Gardiner once computed that the volume of the holy city was something over three thousand million cubic miles4. It is difficult to get your mind around a dimension of that kind, although of course it is symbolic. What is pleasing to God may outwardly seem small, but when you have a sense of divine purpose, how expansive it is!
May our hearts expand in the knowledge of things so great and glorious, for His name’s sake.
Aberdeen, Scotland
27 August 2022
Jim T Brown