This evening, there are two readings: Psalm 48 and Isaiah 61.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
In the city of our God, in His holy mountain.
Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,
Is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north,
The city of the great King.
God hath made Himself known in her palaces for a refuge.
For, lo, the kings assembled themselves,
They passed by together.
They saw it; then were they amazed;
They were dismayed; they hasted away.
Trembling took hold of them there,
Pain, as of a woman in travail.
With the east wind
Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish.
As we have heard, so have we seen
In the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God:
God will establish it for ever. Selah.
We have thought on Thy lovingkindness, O God,
In the midst of Thy temple.
As is Thy name, O God,
So is Thy praise unto the ends of the earth:
Thy right hand is full of righteousness.
Let Mount Zion be glad,
Let the daughters of Judah rejoice,
Because of Thy judgments.
Walk about Zion, and go round about her;
Number the towers thereof;
Mark ye well her bulwarks;
Consider her palaces:
That ye may tell it to the generation following.
For this God is our God for ever and ever:
He will be our guide even unto death.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
Because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek;
He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion,
To give unto them a garland for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.
And they shall build the old wastes,
They shall raise up the former desolations,
And they shall repair the waste cities,
The desolations of many generations.
And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks,
And foreigners shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
But ye shall be named the priests of the Lord;
Men shall call you the ministers of our God:
Ye shall eat the wealth of the nations,
And in their glory shall ye boast yourselves.
Instead of your shame ye shall have double;
And instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their portion:
Therefore in their land they shall possess double;
Everlasting joy shall be unto them.
For I, the Lord, love justice,
I hate robbery with iniquity;
And I will give them their recompense in truth,
And I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
And their seed shall be known among the nations,
And their offspring among the peoples:
All that see them shall acknowledge them,
That they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed.
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
My soul shall be joyful in my God;
For He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation,
He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decketh himself with a garland,
And as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
For as the earth bringeth forth its bud,
And as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth;
So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
To spring forth before all the nations.
For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness go forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a lamp that burneth.
Shall we bow together in prayer?
O Father, we just want to thank Thee that we are found here, gathered in the name of our Lord Jesus, gathered into Thy presence with confidence and joy because Thou hast saved us with so great a salvation.
And, O Father, we just very simply, as we come to Thy Word, want to acknowledge before Thee, and confess before Thee, to recognize, O Father, that unless Thou art with us, both in speaking and in hearing, this time will be useless.
But, Lord, we thank Thee that Thou hast provided an anointing both for speaker and for hearer. And, Lord, by faith we stand into that anointing. By faith, Lord, we appropriate what is ours in our Lord Jesus. Make it a reality to us in the person of the Holy Spirit.
And grant, Lord, that in speaking and in hearing, we shall so know Thy divine enabling that we shall meet with Thee and receive from Thee, and that the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus will be granted to us.
O Father, for those to whom the truth that we speak about tonight comes as something already known, bring it with new power and new life. And for those who have never, perhaps, considered this matter, bring it, Lord, we pray, by revelation. But, Lord, have Thine own way in this time, we pray, for we give it to Thee with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I have been considering this matter of Zion in the Word of God. Particularly, we have already looked at, on Monday morning, the battle over Zion. We took Psalm 2 and spoke about the battle over Zion.
We understood that the powers of darkness are seeking to set aside God’s declared will concerning the Messiah, and concerning His purpose for the whole universe, and set up something independent of Him, energized by a different source and by a different power.
Now, insofar as we have been saved by the grace of God, redeemed through the blood of the Lord Jesus, and named with His name, we have been introduced into this tremendous conflict. It is a conflict that actually predates time. It began somewhere before time, and began with the fall of the person we know as Lucifer, Satan.
We will not go back into that, because we spent a whole session on that matter, talking about the battle over Zion. But we are witnessing this whole battle coming to its climax in our generation. Because if we are at the end of the age, then we can well expect that now, in these days, we shall see the whole heightening of this conflict to its climax.
Thank God, we have already looked at the fact that the Lord has also declared His intention:
Yet have I set My King
Upon Zion, My holy hill.
So we have no cause for fear at all.
Now, what I want to consider this evening is the building of Zion—the building of Zion.
This whole matter of Zion is not some old-fashioned, square idea from the Old Testament that somehow or other has very little, if anything, to do with us believers. Some people think of the word Zion as a kind of Victorian, or even medieval, idea, with very little to do with the twentieth century.
There are those who believe Zion has nothing to do with the New Testament, that it is, in fact, an Old Testament term and is not found in the New Testament. But Zion is a tremendously important name, and it is filled with divine significance.
For instance, we read of Mount Zion; the stronghold of Zion; Zion, the city of the great King; the inhabitants of Zion; the daughter of Zion; the daughters of Zion; and the children of Zion.
We are told that the Lord loves the gates of Zion; that He has founded Zion; that He calls it “My holy hill of Zion,” “the mountain of My holiness”; that He has chosen Zion; that He dwells in Zion; that He is great in Zion; that He fights for Zion; that He is jealous for Zion; that He will roar from Zion; and that out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, He hath shined forth.
We are told that the Redeemer will come to Zion, that He will save Zion, that He will build Zion, that He will comfort Zion, and that He will reign in Zion. And that the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
That is just a sample of the way the word Zion is used in Scripture. If it is some old-fashioned, square, Victorian idea that belongs to some dim and antique past, I am amazed. If the Lord dwells in Zion, is great in Zion, fights for Zion, is jealous for Zion, saves Zion, and builds Zion, and if the Redeemer is going to come to Zion, it must be a very important matter.
It is, in my estimation, of tremendous significance. Therefore, it is all the more necessary and vital that every truly born-again believer should inquire of the Lord as to what Zion means. What does it mean?
It is an interesting thing that we do not really know what the Hebrew word Zion means. There have been a number of explanations, but we do not know. The best and latest statements on the root meaning of this Hebrew word are that it probably comes from a word meaning a waterless place.
Some people may be very upset about that, especially when they think of that wonderful Psalm 87. But perhaps it is right. You see, it says:
His foundation is in the holy mountains.
The Lord loveth the gates of Zion
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of thee,
O city of God. Selah.
Then, in the last verse, it says:
They that sing as well as they that dance shall say,
All my fountains are in thee.
That would be very interesting if Zion actually meant parched ground: “All my fresh springs are in thee.”
The Lord chose Zion deliberately because it was a smaller mountain surrounded by higher mountains. All the nations chose high places for their worship, but the Lord chose a mountain that was lower than all the mountains round it, so that they would not have a high place like the other nations.
There is no capital city in the world that has ever been chosen without a sufficient water supply. Most of the great capital cities of the world have been chosen because they are on major navigable rivers, because they have great harbors, natural or man-made, because they are on great crossroads or trade routes, or because they have other great natural commercial advantages.
Jerusalem has none of these. Jerusalem has no river. It has a little stream, which today runs some thirty feet below the surface, called the Kidron, which you cannot even see. It never had a harbor, man-made or natural. It never had a navigable river. It was never on great international trade routes or highways.
The great international highways of antiquity ran to the east—the King’s Highway, from south to north—and to the west, the Via Maris, the Way of the Sea, mentioned by Isaiah in Isaiah 9, speaking of the Messiah’s coming.
But Jerusalem was not built upon the actual trade routes or crossroads. God chose this city without even a sufficient water supply, because the only natural water supply of the whole of Jerusalem is a little spring called Gihon, which you all know, I am sure, from the Word of God.
This little spring, Gihon, was actually outside the city walls until King Hezekiah, probably by revelation, decided to bring it within the city wall. He got his engineers to cut a tunnel 1,777 feet long through solid rock. It was an engineering feat of antiquity.
They came, one from the south and one from the north side, and they actually met each other, hammer to hammer. A few years ago, they discovered the plaque—now in the Istanbul Museum—which records how it happened in the reign of King Hezekiah, naming the engineer who did the work and describing how the men came blow upon blow on either side, until they could hear each other and met in the center. Thus, he brought the water inside the city.
Well now, this is not a geography lesson, so we must get off this ladder. But the interesting thing is this: when God chose Zion, He chose a capital city without a sufficient water supply.
It is as if the Lord was saying, “This whole city is My choice and has no natural advantages. It is dependent upon Me. I will be its glory. I will be its life. I will be its character. I will be its salvation. I will be everything from beginning to end.”
No other capital city can boast of such divine election and choice.
What, then, is this matter of Zion? For those of you who were with us last year, I did touch on this. Forgive me if I go over it again. There are four ways in which Zion is used in the Bible.
First of all, it is an actual mountain. I have made reference to that. If you want a Scripture for it, you will find it in Psalm 78:68:
But He chose the tribe of Judah,
The mount Zion which He loved.
This is an actual geographical hill or mountain, one of the hills upon which the city of Jerusalem is built: Mount Moriah, Mount Ophel, and Mount Zion.
We believe today that, at the very beginning, Mount Zion was synonymous with Mount Ophel and Mount Moriah, and only later came to be the name given to the southwestern hill upon which the old city of Jerusalem is built. Well, so much for that. That is one way in which the word Zion is used in Scripture.
Then, of course, much more often it is used for the city of God, for Jerusalem. It is a name synonymous with Jerusalem. You find this, for instance, in 2 Samuel 5:7:
Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion;
The same is the city of David.
Or again, in the psalm we read together, Psalm 48:2:
Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,
Is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north,
The city of the great King.
So we have this name, Zion, used as another name for Jerusalem, for the city of God. The whole nation was also described as Zion, the capital city being used to describe the whole nation. We get such words as “daughter of Zion” and “inhabitants of Zion,” covering the whole nation.
Then there is a third way—and this is a controversial way—in which the Bible uses the word Zion, and of which I am a firm believer. It describes the national and political movement for Jewish liberation, which has resulted in the recreation of the Jewish state in 1948, on May 14.
We have that, for instance, referred to in Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea, we wept,
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
We hanged up our harps.
For there they that led us captive required of us songs,
And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
In a foreign land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
If I remember thee not;
If I prefer not Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.
What is this psalm doing in Scripture if all it is is the sorrow of God’s people in a time of national exile and dispersion? If you say to me that it has something for us believers, for those who are in travail for God’s church and in travail for its restoration and completion, then I understand that the psalm has more meaning.
But it has also a very real meaning for the Jewish people. In the 1,900 years of their exile, this psalm has been read again and again at the great festivals and in the prayers for each day.
We have the same use in Isaiah 66:8:
Who hath heard such a thing?
Who hath seen such things?
Shall a land be born in one day?
Shall a nation be brought forth at once?
For as soon as Zion travailed,
She brought forth her children.
I would like to know how we spiritualize that verse. It is very well to say that we are in travail, and that the Jerusalem which is above is in travail for the birth of her children who are born of God. But what does it mean when it says, “Shall a land be born in one day?” How do we spiritualize that?
If it has a literal meaning, then on May 14, 1948, a land was born in a single day and a nation brought forth at once. After centuries of Jewish anguish, sorrow, suffering, and persecution, the Jewish people saw a land born in a single day and a nation brought forth at once.
I know there are those who may not agree with me on this matter, but I believe very firmly that there is a third way in which this name Zion is used in Scripture. It has to do with the Jewish people, the recreation of the state of Israel, and the final redemption of Israel.
Then there is the fourth and most important way in which the word Zion is used. We find it, for instance, in Psalm 50:1-2:
The Mighty One, God, the Lord, hath spoken,
And called the earth from the rising of the sun
Unto the going down thereof.
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God hath shined forth.
I think anyone who is honest could hardly call earthly Jerusalem the perfection of beauty. I know many people who go as tourists to Israel and go to Jerusalem deeply disappointed. They see the souks and bazaars, the exploitation, the flies, the smells, the heat, the dryness, the aridity, and all the rest; then they ask, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined forth?”
I do not think at any single time in the whole of Jerusalem’s history she has been the perfection of beauty. What, then, is the Lord speaking of? He is speaking of that which physical and earthly Zion represents: that eternal Zion, that spiritual Zion, that which has been on His heart from the very beginning.
When we come to the New Testament, we read in Hebrews 12:22:
But ye are come unto mount Zion,
And unto the city of the living God,
The heavenly Jerusalem.
Those who are born of God, those who have been saved by the finished work of the Messiah, have come unto Mount Zion. They have come unto the city of the living God, to this heavenly Jerusalem.
It is upon this last meaning that I want to dwell this evening, speaking about the building of Zion.
Turn back in your Bible to Isaiah 60:14:
And the sons of them that afflicted thee
Shall come bending unto thee;
And all they that despised thee
Shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet;
And they shall call thee the city of the Lord,
The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
What a wonderful phrase: “The city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.” In those very words there is tenderness, intimacy, and a wonderful sense of divine election. O, what a mystery there is. “They shall call thee the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.”
What is Zion? Listen to what the Lord says in Psalm 132:13-14:
For the Lord hath chosen Zion;
He hath desired it for His habitation.
This is My resting-place for ever:
Here will I dwell; for I have desired it.
Is this not wonderful? Listen again: “For the Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habitation. This is My resting-place for ever.” Did you hear? Zion is the Lord’s resting place for ever.
God has come to rest. God has found a home, a resting place for ever—not a lodging place, not a place on a pilgrimage, not a stage in an ongoing purpose, but something which is forever: the heart of the whole matter.
It is as if the Lord is saying, “I have a tremendous purpose for the universe, and beyond that, for universes beyond universes. But I want you to know that at the heart of the whole thing lies something which is permanent, something which is eternal, something from which I will not move. This is My resting place for ever.”
No wonder there has been a battle over this. This is not merely a stage in God’s ongoing purpose. This is something which provides Him with His base for all His operations in eternity.
We make our salvation so small, as if somehow or other being saved is merely a matter of being forgiven, being blessed, having a few gifts, a little fellowship, reading the Bible, and saying prayers. But that is not all there is to it.
The idea is that one day we die, and although we all sing about being with the Lord, once it becomes apparent that that day might dawn rather earlier than we thought, we do anything we can to postpone it.
Then, when we die, we shall go to heaven, sit on a damp cloud in a glorified nightie, and pluck a harp for all eternity. That is what people have thought: somehow or other we Christians are living in the Middle Ages, as if this gospel we present is just nonsense, a fairy tale.
But this is not the gospel. The gospel is this: God has a tremendous purpose for this universe—a colossal, significant, amazing purpose for this universe, and beyond it, for the universes that are unexplored.
But He wants a base. His whole purpose has been arrested, in one sense, by the fall of man. Yet not really, because instead of God blowing the whole thing to smithereens and saying, “We will start again with another universe and another humanity,” He gave His own Son, that He might redeem this fallen race and bring them back into His heart’s purpose—back into His original plan for them.
Then, when He has trained them, disciplined them, and educated them, He will say, “Now then, we are ready. We have got the King in His place, and we have got Zion in its place. Now we are ready to go on with the real purpose.”
Do you not know, dear friends, we do not even really know what the purpose of the Lord is? We say things like, “The purpose of the Lord is to sum up all things in Jesus.” Well, that is enough for me. I am quite content with that.
But some have more curious minds. They want to know what we shall wear, what we shall eat, what we shall do, how we shall float through space, and whether it will be boring after the first two thousand years. Well, I cannot tell you. But I do know this: God’s creative genius has never been paralyzed and has never been exhausted.
There is something He has in mind. In His glorious mercy and wisdom, He has not revealed it to us, lest there should be a few more sects and denominations. All He has revealed to us is what is absolutely essential and fundamental to our entering in.
Listen again:
For the Lord hath chosen Zion;
He hath desired it for His habitation.
Does that word habitation sound awkward to you? What is a habitation? A habitation is a place you inhabit. It is a place that is home. Think of it like that: the Lord has chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His home.
This is My resting-place for ever:
Here will I dwell.
I feel very sorry for people who have houses that are not homes. Many families have houses, but they have not got homes. To turn a house into a home requires love, sacrifice, patience, loyalty, and togetherness.
I am very sorry for people who have a home that is not a resting place. I know many people whose biggest problems are in their home. It is no resting place for them—such antagonism, such tension, such strain.
But God’s idea in a home is that it should be a resting place. It is the place where you can be yourself. You can take off your eyelashes, take off your glasses, take out your teeth, take off your slippers—and there are a few other things, but I will not go into all of those. You can relax. It is a resting place.
I thank God for every home I go into which is a real home, and for every home that is a resting place as far as I am concerned. But I have to say, however lovely the places I go into, I do enjoy finally getting back to one’s own home, where you have a resting place. You can go in and be absolutely yourself.
I am always thankful there is no telephone where I am. You can be absolutely at rest.
I know this sounds like Sunday school language, but the wonder of it all is this: if God had reduced this tremendous purpose of His into twentieth-century technological and scientific language, who on earth could have understood it? I, for one, would never have understood it.
It would have been a tiny minority of people, educated in a certain way, who could have understood the purpose of the Lord. But He has put it in Sunday school language so that, over thousands of years of human history, men and women of different backgrounds and different times have been able to understand by the Spirit of God.
He has used Sunday school language. He has said, “Now listen, I want a home. I want a home, just as you need a home.” Of course, in one way we cannot speak of God needing a home. God cannot be God if He has a need. God is totally sufficient.
But from our point of view, there is a sense in which God has need, and He reduces it all to simplicity because of His love. It is as if He says, “I cannot rest on My own. I want to have you in. I will have you in with Me. I do not want simply to be in heaven with all those angels. I love them all, but I want you.”
“I created you in a way that the angels were not created. You were not only created; I breathed into you, and you became spirit, soul, and body.”
The angels have not got souls; they are spirits. Animals have bodies and souls of a certain kind, but no spirits. But we are unique. Some people say we are the human ape. Well, if they want to believe it, let them believe it.
There is something essential that marks man from all the rest of creation. It is this: we have been made in the image of God and after His likeness. In spite of our fall, He loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son to bring us back to Himself and reconcile us to Himself.
Once we begin to see this, what a magnificent salvation we have. God has not only forgiven our sins, cleansed us, and justified us for eternity. He has brought us into a union with Himself and called us with such a high calling.
What is this calling? Here it is: it is to be part of this Zion.
This resting place of the Lord—“Here will I dwell for ever”—does not mean, “Here will I visit now and again. Here will I bless it forever. Here will I use it forever.” He says, “Here will I dwell for ever.”
The Hebrew word means, “Here will I settle.” This is where I am going to let My roots go down. This is where I am going to be at home. I will go out from here for everything I do and come back to this. This is My home.
How tremendous is this mystery of Christ and His own: that you and I should have been brought into His Zion. You find it everywhere. This is the heart of the matter. This is the thing that was in God’s heart from before times eternal.
When He created the universe, when He created man in His image and after His likeness, it was this that He longed for. He wanted a bride, as it were, for His Son. We have it in all kinds of ways in Scripture: husband and wife, bridegroom and bride. These two are looked upon as one—one flesh, one spirit.
Or sometimes it is head and body. You have never seen a living body without a head, have you? Sometimes, the way some people act, you would think they had not got heads; but normally speaking, if someone walked in without their head, I would be amazed.
You do not live with a detached head. The whole idea of head and body is that it is one organism. You have never seen a living bodiless head, and you have never seen a living headless body, because the two things belong to one another. They are a living whole.
In the same wonderful way, in John 15:1, our Lord said:
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
And then, in John 15:5:
I am the vine, ye are the branches:
He that abideth in Me, and I in him,
The same beareth much fruit:
For apart from Me ye can do nothing.
The disciples understood something when the Lord Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” It must have been one of the greatest shocks they ever received.
When our Lord said, “I am the bread of life,” that was hard for them to understand. When He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me,” it was hard, but they accepted it. When He said, “I am the resurrection and the life,” it was a hard one, but they accepted it. When He said, “I am the good shepherd,” they understood and accepted it. When He said, “I am the door of the sheep,” they accepted it.
But it must have been the hardest thing of all for them to understand when He said, “I am the true vine.” Why? Because the true vine was a symbol of the covenant people of God. It was a symbol of the nation. How could He say, “I am the nation”?
It is impossible for someone to say, “I am the nation.” If I said to you, “I am the American people,” you would die. Even if I said, “I am the British people,” you would die. You would say, “He is mad. How can he be the British people?”
Josephus tells us something most interesting. In Herod’s temple, in the time of the Lord Jesus, one of the great wonders of the world was this: when a Jew came into the court of Israel with his sacrifice, if he looked up, he saw before the sanctuary, before the door of the actual sanctuary, a great vine of pure gold, all of filigree work, with bunches of grapes, tendrils, and leaves.
Every Jew understood what that was. That was Israel. Now Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” Can you imagine what they must have said? “What does He mean?”
Then He said, “I am the vine; ye are the branches.” I do not think modern believers have any less difficulty than those early disciples—possibly more.
Most of us understand Him as though He said, “I am the trunk; you are the branches.” That is how most people understand it: “Oh, the trunk is here, and we are there, and somehow or other we are joined.”
But anyone who has been to Israel will know that the vine there is nearly all branches. The trunk is very little. The Lord did not say, “I am the trunk; you are the branches.” He said, “I am the vine; you are the branches.”
The vine is the branches, the tendrils, the leaves, the blossom, the fruit, the stem, and the roots. It is the whole thing. It was as if the Lord were saying, “I am you, and you are in Me. I am Israel. I am the people. I am the church. I am Zion, and you are in Me. You are part of Me.”
God has brought you into Him, just as He said, “I am the light of the world,” and then, “Ye are the light of the world.” Do you begin to see?
This whole matter is a matter of unity. It is simply this: when God saves you, He reconciles you. He makes you one with Himself in the Lord Jesus. And when the two of us become one, we are fused together. Blessed be the Lord.
The New Testament uses all kinds of ways of describing His people: growing into a holy temple in the Lord; one body in Christ Jesus; He being a living stone, and we also, as living stones, being built up with Him into a spiritual house. Zion—we have it everywhere.
Turn to Psalm 87:
His foundation is in the holy mountains.
The Lord loveth the gates of Zion
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of thee,
O city of God. Selah.
I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them that know Me:
Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia:
This one was born there.
Yea, of Zion it shall be said,
This one and that one was born in her;
And the Most High Himself will establish her.
The Lord will count, when He writeth up the peoples,
This one was born there. Selah.
What does He mean? He means this: you were born in the United States, but the Lord says you were born in Zion if you have been born again.
Of course, the Lord takes note of your birth in the United States and expects you to do your duty to your country and to your president. The Bible tells us to obey the powers that be and to honor the king—or, in your case, the president.
But even so, the fact is this: in the Lamb’s registry, only those born in Zion are there. Every single person who has been born again is registered as born in Zion.
That is why Galatians 4:26 says:
But the Jerusalem that is above is free,
Which is our mother.
Are you born of God? Then you have been born in Zion, and your name is registered as being born in Zion.
O, if we could only see this matter. But I must bring it down to something more practical. It is one thing to see the eternal purpose of God and the objective of the Lord, and to see that being called “the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel” is marvelous and has something to do with eternity and the ages to come.
But, dear friends, there is a lot to be done down here. God has given most of us the span of one short lifetime of seventy years. In those seventy years, He has to bring us to Himself, save us, cure us of rebellion, deliver us from every evil thing, bring us into union with His Son, bring us to the discovery of His Son, bring us to an exploration of the resources that are ours in the Son, bring us to an understanding of what the church is, help us to be built up together in Him, and teach us the lessons we need to learn if we are going to be part of that Zion for all eternity.
Only God could compress, into a pinhead of time, so much value.
And to think that some of us quibble about the way the Lord is leading us. Sometimes we hold the Lord up for twenty or thirty years on some issue.
Will we not weep in the ages to come? Will it be one of the reasons why God is to wipe away tears from our eyes? “O Lord, how could I have been so stupid? I had that one little pinhead of time, and in that time You were trying to do this and this and this, and I argued and argued and argued with You. I rebelled, I chose my way, and I would have my will.”
Thank God, we never lose our salvation. But we can lose our place in the purpose. I think, for my part, that it would be one of the greatest regrets and sorrows of one’s whole life: that in this little pinhead of time that is my life, I held the Lord out.
Dear one, the Lord does not want to make you miserable. We have the idea that God wants to make us all a lot of monks and nuns—miserable, dressed in black, never smiling, joyless. Somehow or other, we imagine He wants to do everything with us that is unkind.
We have this idea about the Lord: that He is so harsh, that He is so unkind, that somehow He loves suffering, and that if He can put us through the mill, He will do it—even when it is not necessary—because He loves it.
The Lord is not like that. Which father here, which father or mother, would love to see his or her child crying? What real father or mother likes to see their child suffering when they have to discipline them, when they have to take something away, when they have to send them to school?
I remember the first time I was taken to school. I wailed. I remember Mother dithering for a moment, backwards and forwards. I wailed aloud. I knew very well it was the only way to get her. I wailed louder.
Then this huge headmistress—well, to me she was huge; I was a little boy of five—said, “Mrs. Lambert, leave him.”
That was all my mother needed. She turned her back on me and never looked back. She went straight out. That dreadful headmistress said, “Now come along. Follow me.” I was cross. My eyes stopped crying.
But what mother or father wants to cause needless suffering? We have to do it sometimes because we know it is for the best; it is for the highest good. They are going to thank you in the end.
So it is with Father. He loves us so much that in this little pinhead of our lives He will do anything and everything to bring eternal value into our lives. He never brings a thing into our lives unless it adds tremendous, outweighing, eternal value.
He never takes a risk with us and never gives us a needless test. But, my dear friend, we give ourselves needless suffering. We argue with Him, we rebel, we try to choose our own path, we do this and we do that. What sufferings we bring upon our own heads.
Thank God, even then He turns it all to good account once we have repented and once we have turned back to Him.
My point is this: we can talk about Zion and go on and on and on, but where is this Zion made a reality? Down here, on this earth—in the heavenly, yes, but on the earth; in time, in locality, in your little lifetime and my little life.
What is it all about? We shall come to this on another night, but it is all to do with producing materials. There are only three things that Zion is made out of, and we read about them in the last two books of Revelation: gold, precious stones, and pearl.
The whole work of the Holy Spirit is to work those wonderful materials, those constituents of Zion, into our lives. They are all Christ—the life and nature of Christ. They are ours through His finished work.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to work those materials into us, to get rid of the wood, hay, and stubble that we cling to and love so much, and substitute gold, precious stones, and pearl.
But it is not only a matter of a personal walk with God. This Zion is compact. It is built, as it says in Psalm 122, as a city that is compact together.
It is built together, fused into a unit: living stones built with living stones, tightly framed together.
Am I to believe that I can be part of this Zion when I have lived the whole of my life at odds with my brothers and sisters down here? If I live in a permanently divisive state, always colliding with my brothers and sisters, always causing trouble, never learning, never being subject to anyone?
No, friend. It says:
Be filled with the Spirit;
Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
Singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;
Giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
To God, even the Father;
Subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.
In other words, there is something about relationship to one another. It does not mean that I am in a slavish kind of fear of you, and you are in a slavish kind of fear of me, with all of us living in a kind of inhibited state. No.
It means that, in some wonderful way, you and I have got to find our relationship to one another. We have got to learn to walk together. We have got to learn to live together. We have got to learn to work together. We have got to learn to complement one another. We have got to learn somehow or other to be built together as God’s Zion down here.
Unless you and I can find that foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ down here on earth, and by His grace stay with one another on that foundation, what hope is there of any building of Zion?
The time has gone. Now, just in closing, I want you to consider who is the builder of Zion, because none of us will ever stick this thing out unless we know who the Builder is.
Thank God, the Builder is the Messiah. Listen to those wonderful words we read in Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me;
Because the Lord hath anointed Me
To preach good tidings unto the meek.
I think you all know this is a Messianic prophecy. It is the words of the Lord Jesus Himself. He said these words were fulfilled when He spoke in the synagogue at Nazareth: “This day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears.”
But listen to this:
And they shall build the old wastes,
They shall raise up the former desolations,
And they shall repair the waste cities,
The desolations of many generations.
Once the Lord saves a people, once He does something in their lives to His glory, then they become with Him the builders of Zion. The consequence of His work is building, restoration, and completion.
I am glad that the Lord Jesus said to Peter:
Upon this rock I will build My church;
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
There are those who seem to think that our Lord said—or understand this statement of our Lord to mean—“Upon this rock I will build My church until the middle of the twentieth century. Then, when the night comes, I shall give up.”
I do not find that in the Word at all. What I do find is this: in the midst of all these dreadful, awesome visions of dragons, serpents, false Christs, antichrists, false prophets, and great worldwide prisons, I hear this word:
The bride hath made herself ready.
One might have thought that it ought to say, “God has made the bride ready.” But it says the bride hath made herself ready:
Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad,
And let us give the glory unto Him:
For the marriage of the Lamb is come,
And His wife hath made herself ready.
In this same vein, the prophet Zechariah, speaking about the completion of the building program of God, said:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,
Saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain?
Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain;
And he shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of,
Grace, grace, unto it.
That seems to mean, as I see it, that in the last stage of this age there will be so much apostasy and so much backsliding, but the grace of God will be so provided that anyone who wants to may take hold of it and be in the completion of God’s purpose.
Thank God, God has said to you and to me: the Builder, the Messiah, our Lord Jesus, has said, “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” I am with Him. I would rather side with Him than with anybody else.
If He has said the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it, then the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. He has said it. We have authority for it.
If the apostle John, on that lonely island of Patmos, saw the bride that made herself ready, then, thank God, we have ground for rejoicing. The bride is going to make herself ready by the grace of God. He gave a revelation to His servant for our comfort and our encouragement.
The other thing I want to leave you with is in Psalm 102:13-16:
Thou wilt arise, and have mercy upon Zion:
For it is time to have pity upon her,
Yea, the set time, is come.
For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones,
And have pity upon her dust.
So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord,
And all the kings of the earth Thy glory.
For the Lord hath built up Zion;
He hath appeared in His glory.
Are you amongst those who have pleasure in her stones and have pity upon her dust?
Do you look upon all the many divisions, heresies, mixture, counterfeits, and so much else amongst the people of God, and somehow become superior and say, “I do not want anything to do with it. I am an overcomer. I am one of the elite. I am a superior spirit”?
Or do you look upon that dust and upon those stones lying in ruin with tears because you love Zion? You may not love the thing that has brought about the ruin, but you love those stones. You love the very dust.
There was an old Jewish sage, Judah Halevi, who is reckoned by some as the greatest of all Jewish poets of the twelfth century. He went to Jerusalem because, in some strange way, he saw in the city of Jerusalem, in all its ruin, some token of a glory that was to be.
As he came near to Jerusalem, he knelt in the dust outside its western gate. As he prayed, an Arab horseman rode over him and killed him. So the story goes, as he lay dying, supported by two friends, he recited the poem that he himself had written:
O who will give me eagles’ wings
That I may wander far?
And I will rend my heart in twain,
My scattered ruins are.
Until I mingle with thy dust
The waters of my tears.
Shall I not kiss thy very stones,
And love thy ruins dear?
Shall not thine earth upon my lips
Taste sweeter than honey unto me?
That was a Jewish poet dying with faith in an earthly city. Have you got that faith in the eternal? Is its dust something precious for you? Is Zion something so precious to you that it brings tears to your heart?
Or do you look upon your brothers and sisters mixed up in all kinds of things with a kind of superiority and condemning spirit? “What are they doing there? They should never be there. Silly things. They are poverty-stricken, powerless.”
No, friends, they are your brothers and sisters. They are the living stones whom Jesus gave His blood to redeem. Do you love them? There is no other Zion.
The set time has come—yea, the appointed time. That is why I believe the Holy Spirit has been poured out in the last decade: not merely to bring people together.
Praise God for any experience of the Holy Spirit that leads us to the discovery of the Person of the Godhead. But it is that we might be brought, in the final era of this age, to the place where we can overcome and see the realization of the purpose of God—the building up of Zion, the completion of Zion.
God burn this thing into your heart. May this love of Zion, because it is the city of the great King, come into your heart so that you shall never be the same again.
You will be a spiritual Zionist, with a flame in your eye and a flame in your heart. You will never rest again. Like Abraham, you have seen the city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Architect is God.
So we pray.
O Lord, we very simply pray: wilt Thou write on our hearts anything that has been of Thyself this evening? Get this matter of Zion into us, Lord—not as a cultic thing, not as a sectarian thing. Get it into our hearts as truth, living, liberating truth.
And we pray, O Lord, that we may have the highways to Zion in our hearts in a clearer way than ever before from this night. Lord, do this, we pray, by Thy Spirit. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.