“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... 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”
(Ps. 48:1,2,12-14).
“He looked for the city
which has the foundations, whose builder and maker is God”
(Heb. 11:10).
“For other foundation
can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”
(1 Cor. 3:11).
“His foundation is in
the holy mountains. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than
all the dwellings of Jacob” (Ps. 87:1-2).
The words of the twelfth verse
of Psalm 48 suggest a contemplation of Zion as a whole. “Walk
about Zion, and go round about her.” It is not possible
to piece together all that is in the Scriptures about Jerusalem
and Zion without being carried out and on to the Lord Jesus and
to His church. It would be of very little value to us in our
spiritual lives, in all our conflicts and our sufferings and our
perplexities and in all that goes to make up the walk with God,
to have in the Bible a lot of things said about some city in some
part of the world which has had a great history and a lot of
attention drawn to itself as being the centre and object of many
a quarrel and dispute and conflict, a city in which the nation to
which it belonged had a great deal of pleasure and delight and
about which its psalmists composed psalms, praises and other
adulation. It would be very little help to us to just have that
as something recorded and handed on as a book. The Bible is not
like that. Neither is the Bible intended just to be a book from
which we draw lessons That is, certain things happened long ago
and you draw lessons more or less from them, you make them
examples. It is very much more than that. Everything that is here
in the Scriptures is something which is timeless and which is
therefore at hand to be of value in a spiritual way in any
moment. In a word, it is all gathered into the Lord Jesus, and
then is brought to us in the Holy Spirit to be made of practical,
present value in our spiritual experiences and, great as is the
amount about Jerusalem and Zion, it is all about the Lord Jesus.
As I have said, it is impossible to sit down and gather together
all these things under these names, if you have any spiritual
illumination at all, if you are in any way being taught by the
Spirit of God, and not to be transported to the Lord Jesus and
find these things belong to us in a very real inward way. So that
the contemplation of Zion in the Spirit will become a
contemplation of Christ. Just as Jerusalem is a comprehensive
symbol in many numerous particulars, a symbol of divine meanings,
so Christ is the reality of all those meanings brought into a
vital organic relationship with believers. We see Christ speaking
in this many-sided symbolism, speaking right into our lives,
going right down to the very depths of us with challenge,
comfort, assurance and all the things that we need. For anyone
who knows the Psalms alone, knows how many things are said in
connection with Jerusalem and Zion for the comfort and help of
the Lord’s people.
We have often noted that the
book of the Psalms compasses the whole range of human need, and
has ever been that to which the people of God in their hours of
need have turned. What a history there is of turning to the
Psalms and finding in the Psalms something to meet almost any
need of which we can be conscious. It is as though those who
wrote the Psalms were caused to pass through all the experiences
of which men are capable and to cry out for and find God in those
experiences. Yes, it is like that, and if so much of it is
gathered up into connection with Jerusalem and with Zion, then it
is all pointing towards and summed up in the Lord Jesus. It
simply means that He is the answer to the sum of all our need. He
speaks to us as Zion spoke to Israel of old and to those
Psalmists who passed through those many experiences.
The
Foundations of Zion
Now the other passages which we
have read refer to one phase of this whole matter of Jerusalem
and Zion - that is, her foundations. The passage in Hebrews 11
referring to Abraham said that he looked for the city
which has the foundations. Then the apostle Paul says the
only foundation is Jesus Christ, there is no other foundation.
Then the Psalmist says, “His foundation is in the holy
mountains.” God’s foundation is in the holy
mountains. You remember the word of the Lord to Abraham was that
he was to go to a distant mountain, the land of Moriah, and offer
Isaac for a burnt offering there. And, reaching the summit of
Mount Moriah and looking across the intervening space of time,
the next appearance of Moriah is in David’s day. You
remember the story of David’s failure over the numbering of
Israel, the devastation throughout the land, and eventually the
threshing-floor in Mount Moriah, and there the offering to the
Lord and the ravage of death stayed, the sacrifice, and the
temple secured, the place of the house of the Lord, and you reach
another phase, another point, in the foundations of the house of
God. And the next time, without mentioning the name Moriah or any
earthly mountain, looking from that point with David on over
another long period of time, you come to what Abraham looked for
- the city which has the foundations. You come to Christ and you
come to the heavenly Jerusalem and see what God has been moving
towards all the way, and you find that Abraham’s experience
was foundational and David’s experience was foundational.
And if you gather up the meanings of the offering of Isaac, as of
receiving him back as from the dead, the meaning of that great
mercy of God to David on Mount Moriah, you find exactly what
spiritual foundations are. To those we shall come presently, but
here it is foundations which are in view, Zion’s
foundations.
The
Importance of Foundations
Foundations are exceedingly
important things. Sooner or later, everything, as to its real
value, will be determined by the foundations. There is a sense in
which we are never finished here with foundations. Of course,
there is another sense in which the foundations are laid once and
for all, and we are not supposed to go back and lay the
foundations again and again. But there is another sense in which
we are never finished with foundations, though they may be laid.
We are always being dealt with on the basis of our foundations.
God is dealing with us in the light of our foundations or His
foundations. Sometimes a great building will completely collapse,
and when investigation is made, it is found that the trouble was
in the foundations. Sometimes a building will become a very
distorted thing. Only a few days ago I saw in Scotland a
building. It was straight when it was put up, but now one wing
was at this angle, another wing was at that angle. The windows
would not close, no door would fit, everything was askew, and of
course there is no difficulty in explaining: the foundations have
given way, they simply have not stood up to things. That building
was exposed to a large extent of open country. Across that
country, down from the mountains beyond, came the winds, and they
discovered the foundations, and there is the building all over
the place. These things are true of many lives. Some collapse
entirely, some become distorted, twisted, all topsy-turvy,
confused, all angles, and it is just foundation trouble. Some
reveal terrible inconsistencies in the superstructure, raising
great questions as to the thoroughness of the work which
underlies. It is all a matter of foundations so often. We can
become very top-heavy with our superstructure truth. We can have
all the truth of the church, the Body of Christ, and all these
heavenly things which in themselves are perfectly true, and we
may have them all as a matter of teaching; and something happens
in the day of adversity and we go to pieces, we just do not stand
up, we are found out, we collapse. We are all having to make
confessions along that line. We break down. There is some
weakness somewhere in the matter of foundations.
Well, what is the meaning? What
must we do? We must contemplate Christ afresh, firstly in
relation to foundations. If He is the foundation, if Zion takes
its character from Him, and if Zion is all that these Scriptures
says Zion is - “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O
city of God” (Ps. 87:3); “The Lord loves the
gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob” (Ps.
87:2); “Beautiful in prospect is Zion, the joy of the
whole earth” (Ps. 48:2) - so you can go on - if those
things are true and such a Zion takes its character from its
foundation, then in order to have such things as being true of
us, of the church, we must look at the foundation, that
is, we must look again and yet again at Christ.
The
Stability of Christ the Foundation
One thing here which of course
immediately rises in connection with what I have been saying
which is perhaps the first, the supreme characteristic of Christ
as foundation and of every right foundation, and that is
stability. That is what a foundation is supposed to be - stable,
to have stability. Oh, how steady He was; how quiet, how
confident, how assured, how unmoved, how imperturbable was the
Lord when He was here. Nothing moved Him, nothing shook Him,
nothing made Him waver. He quietly, steadily, in composure, faced
every on-rush of adverse forces from earth and from hell. Indeed,
He was a Rock. With the fast-gathering storm, the nature of which
He knew perfectly, about to break upon them all, the most
terrible storm in history, forces of hell working through every
earthly means, right on the edge of it He said, “Let not
your heart be troubled” (John 14:1). He knew the trouble
that was coming to Him and to them. “Let not your heart
be troubled.” Yes, that is the Lord Jesus. Stability!
The
Secret of Christ’s Stability
But what was the secret? It was
not just human composure, the strength of a great soul, of a
great will. There was a secret. His life was deeply rooted in His
Father in heaven. That was a favourite phrase of His - ‘Father
in heaven’. His whole life was deeply rooted, or, to keep to
our metaphor, founded and grounded in His Father in heaven. A
heart relationship is implied by “the Father”, “My
Father”.
Now, that heart relationship
with His Father was not a thing which just existed in His case in
a way in which it does not exist in our case. I mean, it was
something that was put to the test and tried in every way. Satan
did his utmost to interfere with that heart relationship with the
Father. “If thou art the Son...” (Matt. 4:3).
Everything was focusing upon that heart relationship with the
Father. There is the insinuation that this One in need, in
weakness, is not being cared for by the Father. “If thou
art the Son...”. The last terrible ordeal was focused
upon the same point. “The cup which the Father has given
me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). Oh, what a cup!
What a bitter cup! But He said ‘The cup - not that God
has imposed upon Me, not that I must be resigned to it -
which the Father has given me’. My Father gives Me the most
bitter cup that ever man has been called upon to drink - My
Father gives it. You see the point. It is a terrible cup, but it
is handed by the Father. That speaks of a heart
relationship, does it not?
Yes, tested in that
relationship, along every line, and passing it on to His own. “Your
heavenly Father knows...” (Matt. 6:32). “My
Father... your Father” (John 20:17). The Father in
heaven; the place where He was rooted, where His foundations
were, that place was altogether outside of this world. It needed
to be. Only so could there be stability. If His foundations had
been in this world, well, there would be no stability, no
security here. His foundations were outside of this world. Oh,
thank God that there is a place of security outside of our world.
The apostle uses another simile when he speaks of the place of
the anchorage of the soul, sure and steadfast, within the veil
(Heb. 6:19). It is the same thing; an anchorage, yes; a place of
foundation, yes; a place of rooting outside. Christ had His
foundation outside of this scene and all that belongs to it. Paul
puts that into a phrase - “Your life is hid with Christ
in God” (Col. 3:3), outside of this scene. Hidden, yes,
foundations are always hidden, but oh, how important they are!
Christ’s
Stability Must be Ours by the Spirit
If the Lord Jesus is the
foundation, how is He the foundation? If that is true as to His
foundation, and that has got to be true of us - how? We have been
so superficial. We have said, Yes, “other foundation can
no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”,
and that means His Deity, His Godhead; that means that He
accomplished a great atoning work on His cross, He rose from the
dead, He ascended to heaven, He is there at the right hand of the
Majesty on high, He is coming again, and these things comprise
the foundation. That is all true, do not misunderstand me, I am
not taking anything from that, but I want to say we can believe
all that and be terribly shaken and completely collapse. We can
believe it as a matter of doctrine and as a matter of facts, and
yet somewhere, somehow, there is a gap between our perfectly
orthodox doctrine, our sound doctrine and the stability of our
lives, the straightness of our lives, the consistency of our
lives. Somewhere there is weakness, and yet we have all that.
Jesus Christ as the foundation is not so only as a matter of
doctrine or in any objective way. The Holy Spirit has come to
enter into us as the Spirit of Christ. Paul speaks of the supply
of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and by the supply of the Spirit of
Jesus Christ he would be able to do certain things (Phil. 1:19).
What did he mean, and what is that? It just means that what has
been wrought and ratified in the Lord Jesus and perfected in Him
through testing, through suffering, through trial perfected, is
now, by the Holy Spirit, made true in us. We shall take our
character from Him by the Spirit, and we too shall become, if not
all at once, yet quite definitely in a progressive way more
assured in our hearts, more steady, more confident, more unmoved.
Our early storms are child’s play, but even then to a child
a little adverse wind is a terrible hurricane, it is awful. As we
go on with the Lord, we find that we come up against blasts,
cyclones, of spiritual adversity, trial and assault which no
child could stand up to, and we find that we are shaken by this
new test, this new trial, this new form in which the Lord is
allowing us to be assailed. Oh, blessed be God, the story is that
we are not carried away; it is marvellous how we survive and come
through. Why? - because of the supply of the Spirit of Jesus
Christ.
What is the Spirit of Jesus
Christ? Firstly, the Spirit of steadfastness. It is not our
steadfastness, God knows. If it were left to us, we should have
been carried away long ago, we would not be here. We are
learning, yes, by our own failure often, by our own breakdown,
our own weakness under trial and assault, we are learning Christ,
we are discovering Christ, we are coming to the place more and
more where we worship and say, ‘Well, I never thought I
would weather that one, it did not look as though I was going to
get through that one, it looked very much as though that one was
going to be the end of me, but I am coming through.’ It is
in that way that He is our foundation. I know foundation truth is
His Deity and His atonement, that is the foundation for our
faith, but somehow He Himself has got to come in and be my hope
of glory, or else there is no hope at all. He has to be my hope
of glory inside, be a sure foundation in my spirit, an
unshakeable foundation, and, for those who have gone any distance
with the Lord through the years, it is possible for them to say
very humbly, ‘Yes, I used to be caught along that line, I
cannot be caught along that line now. There was a time when that
would have shaken me terribly; thank God, I have got beyond that.
I have not got beyond the point of being shaken, but not on that
point, in that way.’ We see that He has gradually brought us
on in the matter of His own stability. Rock-likeness - is not
that exactly what He meant when He said to Peter, “Upon
this rock I will build my church” and “Thou art
Peter (a piece of rock)” (Matt. 16:18)? This was a
prophecy concerning a weak man, that he would take his character
from his Lord and become a part of Christ in that sense, that, by
the Holy Spirit, what was true of Christ would be true of him.
Rock-like - oh, how much in
these Psalms there is about the rock. “Thou art my rock.”
How often David used that word of his Lord. You see the
foundation. Well, I said earlier, there is a sense in which we
never get away from foundations. That is, God is always dealing
with us on the matter of foundations to get us more and more
settled, grounded, assured, confident. There is no end to that
here. All the fresh shakings are to bring that about, all the
fresh adversities are dealing with the matter of foundations. We
never get away from them. We, in other words, never get away from
testings and trials of faith, and is not faith the very
foundation of everything? Dr. Campbell Morgan published a little
book on Job. Coming to the last chapters of the book of Job,
those chapters in which the Lord takes up matters with Job and
leads him out - “Where were you when I laid the
foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4), ‘What
do you know about this and that?’ He was led right out into
the immense magnitude of God. And Dr. Morgan says God never
touched upon Job’s problem, He never tried to solve Job’s
problem for him or to answer Job’s questions. How God dealt
with Job’s problems was to make Job sure of Himself, the
Lord. And Dr. Morgan says that when Job came to the place where
he was assured of God, his problem no longer existed, it had
gone. Is that not it? The Lord does not answer our questions and
explain our experiences and solve our problems directly. He is
working to bring us to a place where we are so sure of Him
that the problems are undercut. “His foundation is in the
holy mountains.” The Lord loves the gates of Zion. That
is where the heart of the Lord is.
Now note: Abraham was called the
friend of God. How was he the friend of God? How did he become
that which God loves more than all the dwellings of Jacob, where
the heart of God was? Simply because, through testing and through
trial, he imbibed the Spirit of His Son, Jesus Christ. Was not
that the scene on Moriah? - the Spirit of Jesus Christ laying
down His life, His soul. Yes, it was Christ in Abraham, through
testing and trial, that made Abraham the friend of God and made
it possible for God to say, “My friend, My delight,
My beloved. More than all the dwellings of Jacob, these
earthly things”.