THE STABILITY OF GOD’S PURPOSE
Lesley McFarlane
Psalm 87: 1-7; 125: 1, 2; Isaiah 28: 16; 33: 5, 6; Hebrews 12: 22-29
I desire, beloved, to say a few words in relation to these scriptures. What is in mind is to call attention to the stability of God’s purpose. Mount Zion represents this, what is in the purpose of God for His people, an order of things that cannot be affected by breakdown and all that the enemy has brought in against the testimony of God.
So, I began at Psalm 87, written by the sons of Korah, ‘A Psalm. A Song’. It calls attention to the foundation. “His foundation is in the mountains of holiness”. Yes, we are connected with an order of things that is eternal, an order of things that is going through. The thought of mount Zion comes into these passages, the mount Zion which He loved, “Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than all the habitations of Jacob”. I think Zion represents God’s sovereign mercy in intervening in relation to His creature, man, providing a sphere of things that is impregnable, where there can be no breakdown. This Psalm was written by the sons of Korah. We are here this afternoon, beloved, enjoying this line of things like the sons of Korah, subjects of God’s sovereign mercy. They are speaking here from the appreciation of the love of God which they had come to prove. This is a beautiful Psalm, “Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion”. Zion speaks of sovereign mercy and God has intervened in the human race on this principle, mercy. When “they had nothing to pay, he forgave both of them”, Luke 7: 42. That is the state of man away from God, but divine love has intervened in the Person of our Lord Jesus. He came to do the will of His God. He says, “in the roll of the book it is written of me to do, O God, thy will”, Heb 10: 7. Man was to be brought back to God, but it involved that the Lord Jesus had to suffer. The sufferings of Christ are a real matter and they ought to be in our thoughts at all times. “Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and … was buried”, and He was raised again, “the third day”, 1 Cor 15: 3,4. Jesus is now glorified, the work of redemption has been accomplished so that we can know something of the gates of Zion. “Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than all the habitations of Jacob”. God has intervened in His sovereign mercy in relation to our blessing. That is God’s disposition in our dispensation, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3: 23), and God has provided in Jesus One who has met every liability that has been brought into the world.
So it says here, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah. I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon … this man was born there”. God in His sovereign mercy has come in in relation to man in his ruined condition so that we can be here this afternoon as persons who have been consciously redeemed, redeemed by precious blood, that of a Lamb foreknown before time began (see 1 Peter 1: 19). It goes on to say, “And of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one was born in her” and “Jehovah will count, when he inscribeth the peoples, This man was born there. Selah”. So we are here this afternoon as persons who have been born in Zion, each one of us.
Now we get to the next Psalm where it says, “They that confide in Jehovah are as mount Zion, which cannot be moved; it abideth for ever”. Mount Zion, as I have said, speaks of the purpose of God, which is impregnable, what is going through despite all the activities of the enemy. It says, “Jerusalem! – mountains are round about her, and Jehovah is round about his people, from henceforth and for evermore”. We belong to this glorious system of things established by our Lord Jesus in His going into death for us and coming out victorious, so that we might have part in the praises. We have had a series of meetings and the Lord would confirm what we have had so that our souls might be established in grace and we might be here as those who are seeking, by the Lord’s help, to continue.
Now in Isaiah it says, “Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I lay for foundation in Zion a stone”. The Lord Jesus is prophetically spoken of here by the prophet. Yes, “a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation”. Beloved, we can have confidence in what God has done. Here is this precious corner-stone, this sure foundation, “he that trusteth shall not make haste”. The Lord Jesus came into this scene. He is the stone which the builders rejected but God has made Him head of the corner (see Ps 118: 22). The Psalmist could say, “this is … wonderful in our eyes” (v 23). “The stone which the builders rejected hath become the head of the corner”, we belong to this system of things which is impregnable, it cannot be affected by breakdown. We are in the world and we have had experience as to the breakdown that has come in among believers, but what we have here is eternal, “Behold, I lay for foundation in Zion a stone, a tried stone”. The work of our Lord Jesus will last for all eternity, beloved, “a tried stone … a sure foundation”. We know, as far as this world is concerned, that there is no foundation here. Things are frail and there could be a collapse at any time, but God has laid in Zion a sure foundation. You and I can rest on this sure foundation. You think of the Lord Jesus, “a tried stone”! What came out in all the temptations in the wilderness showed how the Lord was able to meet the attack of the wicked one. He is the tried stone and He is also the precious corner-stone. The corner-stone in a building gives character to the building. Here it is, “ precious corner-stone”. The glad tidings, as it is presented to men, is inviting men to come to the Lord Jesus, the tried stone, the sure foundation, the precious corner-stone. He says in Matthew 16, “on this rock I will build my assembly” (v 18). That relates to Peter’s confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v 16). What the Lord Jesus builds is going through into eternity, “a sure foundation: he that trusteth shall not make haste”.
One trusts that what is being said might encourage us to stand. The intent of these meetings is that the work of God might be strengthened in us. We are thankful for the young people with us and we desire that in the older ones we might see something of the stability of God’s work. “He shall be the stability of thy times”, Isa 33: 6. Despite the breakdown, there are those who are seeking to walk in the light of the assembly. There is no breakdown there. It is the only sphere of things in this world where you can find stability. What is being worked out now in the power of the Spirit is going through.
Then in the New Testament where the apostle Paul, no doubt the writer of this epistle to Hebrews, says, “ye have come to mount Zion”, there is some stability, there is some strength. I trust the young people here might have a sense of knowing what it is to come to mount Zion, to come into this sphere of things. This scripture applies to what is present, what we can come into, what we can enjoy through the sovereign mercy of God. We have come “to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem; and to myriads of angels, the universal gathering; and to the assembly of the firstborn who are registered in heaven”. These are very exalted thoughts. There is an “and” seven times in this section. We have come to these things. The Lord said to His disciples, “in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subjected to you, but rejoice that your names are written in the heavens”, Luke 10: 20. So, beloved, that is the sphere we belong to, the heavenly Jerusalem. Then we come to, “the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus, mediator of a new covenant”. We come to the Person, the One who has made it possible for us to enter into these precious things. How thankful we are for the season we have had together so far, but it all hinges on the fact that our Lord Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant. I understand that the new covenant involves Israel, but we are able to come into the spirit of it even at the present time. “And to the blood of sprinkling, speaking better than Abel”. That is the present speaking; we have had some experience of that already in these meetings, divine speaking, which is intended to move us and to cause a greater sense of committal to the Lord Jesus and to those who would seek to walk in the light of the assembly. So it says, “For if those did not escape who had refused him who uttered the oracles on earth, much more we who turn away from him who does so from heaven”. The speaking currently is from heaven. The Spirit of God is here and He is the One who is bringing these precious things to our hearts. It says, “whose voice then shook the earth; but now he has promised, saying, Yet once will I shake not only the earth, but also the heaven. But this Yet once, signifies the removing of what is shaken”. The work of God in our souls, beloved, cannot be shaken. Thank God for the work of our Lord Jesus, that finished work, and as we put our trust in Him we consciously come into a system of things that cannot be shaken, “Wherefore let us, receiving a kingdom not to be shaken, have grace, by which let us serve God acceptably with reverence and fear. For also our God is a consuming fire”. This is a sobering thought that the apostle should bring in here, “also our God is a consuming fire”. The fire is to consume the flesh in you and me, beloved. We are to be affected by the finished work of our Lord Jesus and we are to be here as committed to His will. May the Lord bless His word.
TORONTO
27 September 1997