THE HOLY CITY
THE HOLY CITY
Genesis 2: 18-25; Acts 7:54-60; Acts 9:1-5; Revelation 21: 9-27, Revelation 22: 1-6
One is impressed with the importance of the present moment. I do not think there can be anything more important for our souls than to realise what God is doing here. We have, I feel, sometimes read a Scripture, such as the twenty-first and twenty-second of Revelation, and felt a sense of relief that somehow or other God is going to have a wonderful end in relation to His work. We have read about this wonderful City that comes down from God, and we have noted that it is pure gold, that there is not a bit of dross in it, that everything there is perfect, answering to the measurement which God lays upon it. We have thought how blessed that that should be the end, without realising sufficiently that our part in it is just the measure in which we have been subject to the work of the Spirit of God now; that there is nothing going to come out in the future, but what is being formed now; that the Holy City comes down out of Heaven with all the blessed features which we have read of, because the Spirit of God has wrought them in our souls now. This is the meaning of the presence of the Spirit of God here. His work is as great as the work of Christ. We all have rightly a true sense of the exceeding greatness of the work of Christ. Who can compass the immensity of His work on the cross? The foundation of all blessing in eternity rests on it. But another divine Person has come to earth to do another work, and that is to form in our souls that which will be for ever for the pleasure of God.
I would like to go over these Scriptures a little in order that we might see how it comes to pass that all the features which are described are true in the City. What I want particularly to impress upon all our hearts is that there is nothing there but what was first in Christ. All the saints of the Christian dispensation, all the work of God in their souls, all put together perfectly, do not present one single thing but was first of all here in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not a single thing additional is there. That is the bearing of Genesis 2. When Adam opens his eyes after his deep sleep, he sees what God has wrought during his sleep. He sees one formed that came out of himself. He says: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” All that was in Eve, the whole of her being, came out of Adam. She was taken out of the Man; she shall be called Woman. Eve is a divinely given figure of the Church. The word in Revelation 22 is: “Come hither — I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb’s wife” (verse 9). She is the true Eve. Everything seen in the Lamb’s wife was first of all in the Lamb. It was first of all in Christ. God could, by His mighty wonderful work, take material out of Adam, and, with that material, He builded the woman. That is what is going on today. This is the period of the sleep of the true, the last, Adam. Publicly the Lord Jesus Christ is not active. He is hidden in the heavens. There is not a single movement on earth publicly of the Lord Jesus, but the Spirit of God is working, taking material from Christ, and using it to build in the souls of God’s people what will be seen in its display as the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife.
The Lord Jesus is shortly to wake up; He is shortly to begin His activities again in relation to this scene, and, when He does, He presents the Church to Himself a “glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing” (Ephesians 5: 27), and He sees in it His own blessed features — nothing whatever there but what was first of all in Him, and He says, in effect: “This time... she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2: 23). Let us enquire as to how this is going on.
The Gospel of John greatly helps. The Lord says of the Spirit of God: “He shall take of Mine” (John 16: 15). That is the rib. It is material out of Christ. “And shall shew it unto you.” The effect in us as that goes on is that there is formed in our souls that which corresponds to Christ. The mighty work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the saints today is to bring before us that which is of Christ, in such a way that it becomes formative in our souls, and the end of which is the Holy City, the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife.
I would like to dwell upon a few of the main features of the Holy City as seen here in Christ. It is not something which has developed apart from Christ. There is nothing going into the City but that which came out of Him. I would like to portray the Holy City moving about in the person of Jesus. Every single thing in the twenty-first and twenty-second of Revelation was all here in the person of Jesus. One cannot touch all the detail, but one would like to deal with a few of the main features of the City.
First of all, we see that the City is the means of the administration of the grace of God — of all blessing which is in the heart of God. It is administered to men through the City. That City was here in the person of Jesus. It was all here. The first feature of it is that it is seen descending out of heaven from God (Revelation 21: 10). How true that was of the Lord Jesus! Was there ever such a descent as His? Ever such a coming down of what was in heaven, as when the Lord Jesus descended? He says: “I came down from heaven” (John 6: 38). What a difference from all that came in at the beginning! Satan says: “I will go up,” and man says: “I will go up,” but the Lord Jesus descended. “He that descended” (Ephesians 4: 10). What a wonderful coming down that was! “I came down from heaven.” How? With the glory of God. He brought into this scene the glory of God — the outshining of what God is. One would like to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John like that, and see that there was in the life of Jesus the blessed outshining of all that God was. Everything which distinguishes God was all shining out in the Lord Jesus. It says: “Her shining was like a most precious stone” (verse 11). What a blessed light it was. Look at that ray — that blessed ray at the Cross when the Lord said: “Father forgive them” (Luke 23: 31). What precious light!
Then it says: “Having a wall great and high” (verse 12). That “wall great and high” is seen in the Lord Jesus. If the Church has a wall great and high, it is only because it got it from Christ. If it has the glory of God, it is only because it received it from Christ. If the Church knows how to come down, it is only because it learnt it from Christ. How has the Church a wall great and high? It is for the keeping out of that which is evil, and for the protection of that which is good. How great and high it was in the Person of the Lord Jesus! How the enemy sought to scale that wall. He brought against the Lord Jesus every principle of evil which has ever been presented to a human heart. The powers of evil had no access to the Lord Jesus Christ. Later on, other attempts were made to scale that wall. There came to the Lord those who said: “Master, we know that Thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man; for Thou regardest not the person of men” (Matthew 22: 16). They bring to the Lord the evil principle of flattery, but the Lord, perceiving their evil, says: “Why tempt ye me?” There is no access. They cannot get in with their evil. He is impervious to the principles of evil, whether they be in connection with lust or pride, or on the lines of flattery. Again, Peter is used of Satan to attempt to break down that wall. Peter says “Pity Thyself, Lord.” That is no principle for the Holy City, and the Lord says: “Get thee behind me, Satan.” The wall great and high is there, and Satan cannot get in.
Then we read that the City has twelve gates — “on the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates” (verse 12). That is what the City has. If the Church has three gates on every side, and is approachable from all points, it is only because she learned how to be so from the Lord Jesus. Just look at all the gates! Always open. There is no night there. “The gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall be no night there” (verse 25). How blessed that is in the Lord! Always wide open — the access to the blessed administration of the grace of God. No night ever there! Never closed! One can see how they came from all quarters to the gates when Jesus was here. Just think of those wise men of the east. They come in to the eastern gates, and find the Lord Jesus, and the star; the glory of heaven is there, and they find the gates wide open, and they go in and kneel down and worship Him. Look at the north. There is that woman of Tyre and Sidon, who has her daughter tormented with the devil, and she comes up to the gates on the north, and it looks as if they are shut. She cries after him: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.” The Lord does not answer her. One would think for a moment that the gates were shut. The Lord says to her afterwards: “Oh, woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” The northern gates are wide open for her to receive the bounty of that City. The Lord administers from the northern gate to that woman’s soul. On the south side, you can see Zacchaeus coming up from the south. He was prosperous and rich, and he would like to have access to all the bounty of heaven there in the person of Jesus. He gets up into a tree, and the Lord says to him: “Make haste, and come down.” The gates are open, come along in! And look at the west, where the sun sets. The day is closing, but the gates are open. How blessedly the thief found that. The night was beginning to come for his soul, but just as the day ended for him, the western gates are wide open, and the Lord brought him in. It says: “Blessed are they that wash their robes.” That is what happened there. He washed his robe, and entered through the gates of the City, where the tree of life is. On the western side, the gates were not shut. If the City is marked by these features, it is so as receiving them from Christ. He is the source of them.
Then it passes on to speak of the various precious stones in the foundation. The foundation is adorned with all manner of precious stones. This speaks of every divine grace, every moral excellence that the City is going to have — faithfulness, mercy, kindness, compassion, stability, endurance. Every excellence that there is, is all in the foundation of the City. There is no moral excellence, but what shines out first in Christ. If it is faithfulness, He is faithful to death. If it is .mercy, He has it for thousands; and so you can pass on to every moral excellence. They all shine out there.
Another feature is the street of that City. “The street of the City was pure gold, as it were transparent glass” (verse 21). The Church has a street like that, but it received it from Christ. That is where it came from. It is the same street that the Lord was in when He was here. He was only in one street. He never went to any other. He was in one straight path from Bethlehem to the Cross. It says: “Make His path straight” (Matthew 3: 3). That is the street of the City. Not a single divergence. He says: “I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me” (John 6: 38). Every bit of that street is pure gold. You can look where you will, and every step the Lord took was like transparent glass. There was nothing hidden. It was all open and manifest. They came to Him as He was walking down that street, and said: “Who are Thou?” And He said: “Exactly what I say.” What He said and what He did, were exactly the same. John the Baptist greatly rejoiced to see the Lord walking down that golden street. He stood. He had never seen such a path before. “John stood, and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as he walked...” (John 1: 35-36). There never were such footsteps. Peter speaks of His steps: “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” (1 Peter 2: 22). “We should follow in His steps.” If any feature is found in the City in the world to come, the way it came into the City was that the saints appreciated it in Christ.
Another feature is the river — the river that flowed from the throne of God, and of the Lamb (Revelation 22: 1) — a river of water of life flowing out of the throne of God and the Lamb. Cannot you see that blessed river flowing out world-wide when Jesus was here? Wherever there was a soul prepared to bow before the throne of God and the Lamb, it came into contact with that river. See that blessed Man in John 4 coming near in such grace that not even that woman was afraid. He brings the authority of God home to her soul, and then He says: “If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee: ‘Give me to drink,’ thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given Thee living water” (John 4: 10). The river of water of life flows out from the Throne of God and the Lamb. In the seventh of John, the Lord says: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink” (verse 37). Let him come! That is the river of the water of life flowing out of the throne of God and the Lamb. If the Church has that, it only has it because it got it from Christ.
I would like to leave that. I hope we see that the woman was taken out of the man. All that is for the pleasure of Christ — that help meet for Him — can only come out of Him.
In the first nine chapters of the Acts, we have the same thing over again. We have in the ninth chapter the Lord, in a sense, waking up out of sleep. He had gone into death, and had disappeared from this world, and was up in heaven, but, in the ninth chapter, we have a kind of rehearsal of the Holy City, and the Lord wakens up and begins to be active again in relation to the earth. He looks down from heaven upon earth, and He sees those that love Him, and He identifies them. He says: “This time... she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” He does not actually say those words, but as He looks down on the hearts that love Him on earth, He says: “That is Me.” He says to Saul: “That is Me that you are touching on earth.” It is the Woman. This is the burden of the ministry of the Apostle Paul after that. He received light there as to what the saints were. The Lord identified them. Every feature of the Holy City is in the first nine chapters. It was all here in the beginning of the Acts. It was not in display from heaven as men say, but, morally, it was all here. See them coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God! They were up in the upper room. They were in touch with heaven. In a spiritual sense they had been to heaven. The Spirit of God came down to that upper room, and linked them with heaven. Thus they descended. They descended to men. They descended with the glory of God to where there were people from all parts of the earth gathered together. They brought the light of what God is. It shone “most precious.” Look at that glorious ray of the precious light in the case of Stephen, when he kneeled down and said: “Lay not this sin to their charge.” It was the same light that shone in the Person of Christ shining out in the Holy City in Stephen. It is the glory of God in the City, not now in Christ personally, but in the Holy City here on earth.
Then look at the “wall great and high.” Ananias and Sapphira hurl against that wall the principles of deception, but they cannot get in. They meet a wall great and high. That wall is jasper. As they come up to the wall, the whole thing is exposed. They come up to the “wall, great and high.” Simon sought to do the same thing. He gave out that he was some great one, but there is only room for one great One in the Holy City, and that is Christ. Peter says: “Thy money go with thee to perdition.”
Then look at the twelve gates. They are all there. You see them open as Peter preaches to men from all parts of the known world. They say: “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” He says: “Come in through the gates.” “Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” He brings them in through all these gates open on every side. Afterwards it says Philip went down to Samaria and opened the gates there. Afterwards he opened the gates on the south to the eunuch. The Spirit or God sent Philip to open the gates, and in comes the eunuch. And so you see it all there. The Apostle Paul carries on the idea. There is no night. Ananias brings “Saul brother” in through the gates. He is part of the gates after that. With Paul there is never any night. There was never a time when the gates were closed for him. You see him at Philippi at midnight. The gates are not closed. It is daytime for Paul. The jailor is ushered in through the gates at midnight. So, in the prison, Onesimus turns up, and Paul brings him in. All these things were here when the Church was in its first estate. It could be seen and taken account of. The gates were wide open, and every moral excellence shone out. What precious stones shone in Stephen’s face. It shone as the face of an angel. Look at Peter. He was going to be executed in the morning, but it says he slept. That is just like the Lord. Going over the lake the Lord slept. In His confidence in God he was not disturbed. So they all shine out.
Then in regard to that street as it was seen in the first chapters of the Acts; it is a most important street for our souls to be in — to be walking in always. Peter and John went up together. They were in that street. They “went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer.” You can always go together if you are in that street. That street is quite transparent. In Peter’s soul there is nothing that John cannot see, and in John’s soul there is nothing that Peter cannot see. They go up together, and they can pray together: You can always pray together in the street of that City. The secret of walking together is to be in that street. Paul was there. It is the same street as is spoken of from heaven as the street called Straight. Paul always lived there. Right near his end he said: “We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully” (2 Corinthians 4: 2). Those are the by-ways of the will of man, and the human heart. The street to be in is the street called Straight — walking transparently, not walking in craftiness. It is desired that that street should be seen here, and that we should be in it. Not hiding in our hearts certain things. If we do that, then we leave that street. What is normal in Christianity is that all the people of God go up and down that one street called Straight.
Then how the river of water of life flowed out in the beginning of the Acts. How the blessed, life-giving influence of the knowledge of God flowed down first of all into their hearts in the coming of the Spirit, as they were before the throne of God and the Lamb.
That river flowed first of all into the hearts of the one hundred and twenty, then into all those that came up to Jerusalem who heard the word. Then it flowed down to Samaria, and to Cornelius. Wherever the saints were in the beginning, the river of the water of life was flowing out, and the tree of life was available. How they fed upon it! You can see from his writings that the Apostle Paul fed upon the tree of life, getting fresh impressions of the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not things that were written two hundred years ago. Not doctrines laid down in writings that we study, but fresh impressions of the greatness of Christ, always. The saints in the early days were living and feeding upon Christ as the Tree of Life, and the leaves they carried to the nations for their healing.
What I want to show is that the Holy City of God is not something that is going to be seen some day in the future, but it was here in the person of Jesus, and in the saints by the work of the Spirit of God. The foundations bear the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb (verse 14). That City which is going to be built upon the foundations of the Apostles is going to love Christ for ever. It is going to be true to Him for eternity. It is going to be the Bride, the Lamb’s wife. Judas could not be in the foundation. He was guide to them that took Jesus. He was not in the foundation. The foundations must be right. So they say: “The Lord knoweth the hearts of all.” They want one chosen for the foundation whose heart is right towards Christ.
One would just like to bring these few thoughts before us, that we might carry in our souls continually the sense of what God is doing. There is undoubtedly a distinct return morally to the beginning. That is the burden of the recovery of our day. The Lord is bringing things at the end morally to where they were at the beginning. He is giving the ministry of His Spirit. There is a taking of the things of Christ, and bringing them before our hearts, with a view to this — that there should be found those who love Him because of what He is Himself, and then, on the other hand, there should be those here to administer the grace of heaven to one another, and to those outside, with a wall “great and high” that refuses the entrance of evil, and yet, with gates that are never shut for the entrance of what is right; with the excellencies of Christ coming out of the precious stones; with their feet set in the golden street that is transparent; and with the river of the water of life (the blessed knowledge of God) being made available through the saints.
May the Lord grant that we might be continually exercised to listen to the voice of Christ, so that, by our appreciation of Him, these things might be in living evidence amongst the people of God, for His Name’s sake.