It is probable that one of the earliest rulers of Jerusalem was Melchizedek, who is introduced in Genesis 14:18 as king of Salem, for Salem is spoken of in Psalm 76:2 as the tabernacle of God, whose “dwelling place is Zion.” In Hebrews 7:2 the interpretation of King of Salem is given as King of peace. When Israel entered the land, the ruler of Jerusalem was Adonizedek, one of the five kings slain by Joshua after they had come against the Gibeonites who had made peace with Israel. After the death of Joshua, when Judah and Simeon began to take possession of their inheritance, they mutilated Adonibezek, the ruler of Bezek, and brought him to Jerusalem, where he died. This is the earliest recorded history of a city that has already had a great and eventful record in human and divine annals, and that will yet be the great metropolis of the world when Christ reigns in the millennium. In Melchizedek we see foreshadowed the great King, the Prince of peace who will fill the throne, but in the two kings, Adonizedek and Adonibezek, we see the wickedness and violence that have so often filled the fair city of God.
The Earthly Jerusalem
The Jebusites occupied part of the city of Jerusalem, which they called Jebus, until the days of David, and they thought it impregnable, but Joab took this fortified part of the city, which David called Zion. Although the Jebusites had been overcome, and their part of the city taken, David seems to have allowed some of the Jebusites to remain in their possessions, for when Jehovah brought the pestilence upon Israel, and the angel of the Lord came to destroy Jerusalem with a drawn sword in his hand, a halt to the divine judgment built his altar to Jehovah, and he bought the place which afterwards became the site of the temple (1 Chr. 21).
Jerusalem was the seat of David’s government for thirty-three years, and the city where Solomon made silver as stones, and where the temple was built as a dwelling place for the God of Israel, a shrine that was filled with His glory. In the days of David and Solomon we have in Jerusalem a foreshadowing of what the city will be in the coming day, first, the place to which Christ will come as the warrior King to put down all opposition, then as the King of peace to reign in righteousness, and from the river to the ends of the earth. It was to Jerusalem that the queen of Sheba came to see his glory, and to pay tribute to him as the Lord’s anointed.
How very sad it is to see the defilement of the temple in the days of David’s unfaithful sons, its treasures removed, its doors shut, and the house in need of repair and cleansing from defilement. The condition of God’s house reflected the moral state of the city, even as Isaiah wrote, “How is the faithful city become an harlot” (Isa. 1:21). All contributed to the evil, even as is seen in Jeremiah 32:32, kings, princes, priests, prophets and people; and the glory of the Lord was reluctantly compelled to leave the city that had so dreadfully dishonoured the holy Name of the God of Israel, and this before the temple and the city are destroyed.
In sovereign goodness, God brings back a remnant to rebuild the city and the temple, having moved the heart of king Cyrus of Persia to send them with Zerubbabel. Ezra and Nehemiah also returned, and with the prophets Haggai and Zechariah helped the people to complete the work for which they had been brought back to the city. This remnant was restored that there might be a people to receive Messiah, the long promised Saviour of Israel. The Book of Malachi brings out the low moral state of this remnant, but there was a remnant within this remnant that “feared the Lord” and spake often one to another.
When Messiah did come, there was a little remnant waiting to receive Him. Joseph and Mary, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna, were part of the faithful ones whose hearts God had prepared for the coming of the Saviour. How blessed is the contemplation of the holy Babe entering the city and the temple when His parents brought Him there, and how wonderful that we have His words when twelve years old in that same favoured place.
How highly favoured was Jerusalem to have the Son of God there, as recalled by the spirit of God in John 2 and 3; in John 5; and from John 7–12. Words surpassing wonderful were spoken to the Jews, works that had never been seen before were wrought in and near the favoured city, for the blind received sight, and the dead were raised. In spite of all the divine favours manifested, the Son of God was rejected, and Jesus wept over the city, and in sorrow foretold the awful doom that awaited it. Still, in the midst of the sorrow, there was a blessed anticipation of what will yet come to Jerusalem, for on His entry into Jerusalem, towards the close of His sojourn on earth, a multitude hailed Him, crying, “Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that comes in the Name of the Lord” (John 12:12-13).
It is refreshing for the spirit to turn away from the Jerusalem that is stained with the blood of Jesus, and with the blood of the prophets, the city over which the rejected Son of God wept, and to gaze through the prophetic glass upon “the city of the great King” when its judgments and cleansing have been accomplished. Well has the psalmist written, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God” (Ps. 87:3), for many of the Old Testament prophets were privileged to describe the glories of the city in its millennial splendour.
Having described the glories of the King in the coming day, His garments smelling of “myrrh, and aloes, and cassia,” as He comes forth from His ivory palaces, the psalmist views Jerusalem as the queen standing on His right hand, clothed in the untarnishable gold of Ophir. Then it will be known as “The city of righteousness, the faithful city” (Isa. 1:26), “and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth” (Zech. 8:3). On the bells of the horses there shall be inscribed, “Holiness unto the Lord,” and the very smallest of vessels shall have the same inscription (Zech. 14:20-21).
Ezekiel who had been carried in spirit to Jerusalem to observe the abominations that brought on its judgment, and who beheld the glory departing, is used of God to give the details of the restored house, and the restoration of the sacrifices and feasts of Jehovah. He also witnesses in vision the return of the divine glory to fill the house, and closes his prophecy with the words, “and the name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there.” What a day that will be for the earthly people of God, a day that manifests the triumph of the grace of God, and that displays His glory in Him who was once rejected and despised, but now the object of praise and worship.
Jerusalem Above
The Galatian saints were in danger of turning “again to the weak and beggarly elements” (Gal. 4:9) of the religious world, which would have brought them into bondage, a condition that Paul said marked “Jerusalem that now is,” for she was in bondage with her children (Gal. 4:25). Jews boasted of their religious system, but knew not that God had set it aside in the cross of Christ. It was a system that made demands on men which they could not produce, and which held them fast in its shackles, for they were bound to the law in a covenant of blood. Christianity had come to set them free, and all who accepted Christ were liberated from the demands of the law, even as Paul wrote to the saints at Rome, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes” (Rom. 10:4).
Christianity was not an earthly system like Judaism, its origin and centre are in heaven, so that the Apostle could write to the saints of Galatia, “But Jerusalem which is above free, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26). Christians belong to heaven, their origin is heavenly, they have been begotten of this heavenly system spoken of as Jerusalem above, and heaven is our destiny. We can take account of ourselves as born of God, and as belonging to the scene from whence the Son of God came, and where He now is. We are not bound to a system that brings judgment and death, but which has brought us into life and liberty.
The Heavenly Jerusalem
From Galatians 4 we have seen that our origin as Christians is in heaven, and from Revelation 21, 22 we learn that we are going on to the holy Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem, but from Hebrews 12:22-23 we have it revealed from God that, in the faith of our souls, we are even now come “to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” This heavenly city is one of the blessed features of the world to come, which commences with “mount Sion,” for in the coming day Israel’s blessing will centre in mount Zion, God’s hill of royal grace.
If there is an earthly administration centring in Zion, there is a heavenly administration which has its centre in “the heavenly Jerusalem,” the city of the living God. God, as “the Judge of all,” will administer the world to come, not in the secret way that He acts now through His providential government, but publicly, His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, being King of kings, and Lord of lords. No doubt the church has the place of the heavenly Jerusalem, even as within the Father’s house it is the “church of the firstborn (ones), which are written in heaven” (verse 23).
The Holy Jerusalem
In writing of the Lord’s temptations, Matthew speaks of Jesus being taken by the devil “up into the holy city” (Matt. 4:5). It could be viewed as holy because God’s temple was there, and because it would in the coming day answer to this description, when even the pots of the city would be holiness unto the Lord. But in Revelation 21 and 22 we see “the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal” (Rev. 21:10-11). Divine in origin, heavenly in character, the depository of the divine glory, the church is seen as the vessel that gives a true representation of what God is. There has been solemn failure in the church in this world, but all that will have gone, and only what is of God and of Christ will be seen in the millennial day.
The “wall great and high” surely tells us that nothing defiling can enter that holy place, and the gates with the angels indicate the government connected with the city for the thousand years of the reign of Christ, government of a heavenly character in which the twelve apostles of the Lamb have their part, according to the promise the Lord gave them on earth. Everything connected with the city speaks of holiness and purity, the divine light shining in its variegated colours through the precious stones in the foundations of the wall. The nature and character of God is displayed in the city, Christ’s valuation of the church seen in each pearly gate, and the unity of the church viewed as saints walk together in the street of gold, the nations walking in the light that streams from heaven above.
Tribute to God is brought by the kings of the earth to His holy city, which is altogether pure, for only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life have access into it. Here is the paradise of God with its river of life, and the tree of life, its fruits for the heavenly saints, its leaves for the healing of the nations. No curse is there, no angel to guard the way to the tree of life; and the servants of God and the Lamb serve in nearness, seeing His face, and bearing His character, for His Name is on their foreheads.
The New Jerusalem
When the millennial day is over, the church will be found in the eternal scene as the New Jerusalem, with the same divine, holy and heavenly features that marked her in the day of millennial display. For eternity, she is seen “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2), attractive to the heart and eye of Christ, in her pristine freshness and beauty, as fair to Him as on the day of her espousals, when He presented her to Himself “a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing,” but “holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27).
For God, the New Jerusalem is His “tabernacle” with men, the city through which He dwells with men. It is ever been God’s thought to dwell with men, but He could not dwell where sin was. He dwelt in the midst of Israel in His tabernacle and His temple, but these were but temporary dwellings. Now it is no longer in the midst of one nation that He dwells, but among all men in the new earth that has taken the place of the old that fled from before His face, and in which He had been so long dishonoured by sinners. All now is new creation, a scene where sin cannot come, and where God can dwell, resting in all that He has done, on the foundation of the work of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It was to this eternal scene that the overcomer in the church of Philadelphia was directed, for the Lord said to “Him that overcomes will I make a pillar in the temple of my God…and I will write upon him the Name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem…and…my new Name” (Rev. 3:12). What encouragement for the hearts of the faithful to look forward to having such a part in the eternal day, God not ashamed to have His Name upon us, having a portion, as belonging to it, in the new and eternal dwelling-place of God, and being associated with Jesus, the Son of God, and bearing His new Name, the Name that brings to our hearts all that He is in the eternal scene.
R. 26.1.68