City of God
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
By faith Abraham, even though he was past age-and Sarah herself was barren-was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country-a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 11:8-16
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century Marx and Engles gave the world the communist philosophy of history. this philosophy divided history into five periods, three of which have passed; the fourth is the capitalistic period, the "last in which exploitation and class struggle will endure; the period of final revolution, during which all private ownership in the means of production will be destroyed." then will come the fifth and final period, when "the only economic changes to be reflected in society would be those leading to ever greater production, ever more leisure for all, and history would,
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with the dialectic, be transformed into universal tranquility and peace." These final periods of history would take place in three phases: first, violent revolt against the established order, followed by, second, a dictatorship of the proletariat, which will, third, eventually usher in paradise, a classless society where everybody owns everything and all benefits of production accrue to everyone impartially.
More than sixty years ago the revolt began and the communist world is now managed by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The revolution, if begun, has a long way to go in many places. Paradise is still as remote as ever where revolt has been successful. And in the Soviet Union, at least, infighting among the proletariat managers has resulted in many modifications; and in some cases, the adoption of certain capitalistic policies and procedures has been found necessary to implement the system. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands totally committed to this eventual paradise have laid down their lives without the slightest participation in the promised goal. Indeed they never had any hope of the promised goal. They simply sacrificed themselves, or were sacrificed, for some far-off paradise that future generations
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were supposed to sometime enjoy. Millions of others have been beguiled and captivated by this promise of paradise and have capitulated to the tyranny of the proletariat dictatorship for the sake of this far-off goal.
Despite this failure of communism in its post-revolutionary stages to approach its revolutionary goal, it accuses Christianity of being an opiate which lures the proletariat to apathy so they will submit to an indifferent, selfish bourgeoisie, with the promise of "pie in the sky by-and-by." And wonder of wonders, there are many so-called intellectuals in our Western world—among them members of the clergy—who have taken this bait—hook, line and sinker; and in so doing they have betrayed their abysmal ignorance of true biblical, Christian eschatology. With what futile hope does communism comfort and cannibalize its pitifully blinded and benumbed disciples, while its leaders piously maintain control of the "people's property," enjoying the maximum benefits of production in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat? What greater, more effective opiate to the downtrodden masses, to the lambs-for-the-slaughter fellow travelers, than this classless society of
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universal tranquility and peace to be enjoyed by other generations in the unforeseen future? Talk about "pie in the sky by-and-by"!
But, you say, the comparison is false, for communism has been at work for less than a century, and that promise which constitutes the hope of the church of Jesus Christ was given four thousand years ago to Abraham. And Jesus Christ who came to fulfill that promise—according to Old Testament prophecy, His own words and the apostles' words—died two thousand years ago. Millions have died in the faith of this promise without receiving it; hundreds of thousands have laid down their lives for it. And millions of the faithful have gone to their graves without any participation in the promise. Yes, this is true; and this is precisely the point of the passage in Hebrews 11. The author puts it this way: "These all died in faith not having received the promises." But at this point the analogy ends. For unlike the communist hope which promises fulfillment only to future generations sometime, the Christian hope is retroactive, guaranteeing fulfillment to every one who died in faith from Adam to the consummation of history. In the words of
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Hebrews, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." These "all" who died in faith include Abel, Enoch, and Noah, etc. The grave is not the end of hope for the Christian, but it is for the communist! Those who, thousands of years ago, died in faith embracing the Christian promise are already with Jesus Christ in glory, enjoying unspeakable bliss while they await the end of the age and the establishment of God's eternal kingdom. God is calling out a people from every nation and language and tribe and color and race and people, generation by generation. He is calling out a people for His name who will live with Him eternally.
I used communism as an example of the futile hope promised by human schemes and systems, but I could have chosen any other of the many sociological-humanitarian-economic-political panaceas proliferated and propagated by the wisdom and ingenuity of man. From the Tower of Babel to the present moment, every effort of man to solve his problems socially, politically, economically, however
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cleverly conceived and implemented, has ended in futility and failure. They are all 100-percent utopia, which means nowhere. Talk about pie in the sky by-and-by! All except Christianity fall infinitely short of the glorious, indescribable, universal paradise they promised.
I had the pleasure and privilege of bringing a brief message to one of the homes for the aged here in Washington. I suppose there were thirty elderly women present, most of them in wheelchairs, all of them very near the end, very close to the grave. As I waited to speak I looked upon their wrinkled faces, their worn-out, broken bodies and I thought to myself how meaningless are all of the eloquent human schemes for people like this, and there are millions of them in the world. Communism holds no hope for them, but the Bible does! And also for the maimed and crippled, the broken and the diseased, the victims of tragedy and war and unfortunate birth. Paul the apostle declared, "I am persuaded that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).
Apparently this is precisely what the faithful ones believed and felt whose
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exploits of faith are set forth in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Observe the last verses of the chapter, beginning at 32:
And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us [us now reading this] so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
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Commended by God for their faith, or their faithfulness which is a synonym for faith, they all died without having received the promises for which they had lived and sacrificed. But they were absolutely certain that they personally would enjoy fulfillment one day; that the promise was not just for some future generations.
Abraham, of course, is the prototype of this faith. Paul used him as the supreme example of justification by faith in Romans 4. Hebrews delineates the substance of his faith as follows: "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should hereafter receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise" (Hebrews 11:8-9). Isn't that something? "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which
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has foundations, whose architect and maker is God" (vv.9,10). He obeyed. He went out, not knowing where he was going. He sojourned in the land of promise as a stranger. He lived in tents, not mansions, because "he looked for the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God!" Amazing, isn't it, that this nomad whose home was a tent and whose possessions were largely farm animals and whose life was pastoral in the ultimate, should desire a city?
In our modern world everybody is moving to the city! The city has become the number one problem of the twentieth century. Apparently there is something in the human heart that makes people gravitate to the city. We all tend to be critical of cities today, and some of us are trying to get away from the cities by moving to the suburbs, but we are simply succeeding in creating what is called a megalopolis. We are being told that our country will be one continuous city from coast to coast and from north to south along the great arterial highways of the nation. Apparently humanity desires a city, and it shall not be disappointed. A city it shall have. The city of God! Heavenly Jerusalem! Zion! With twelve gates of pearl and streets of gold.
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Now if that is not to be taken literally, the reality will be infinitely more wonderful! It beggars description, this city foursquare, the city of God!
And it has foundations. How important foundations are. How temporary a superstructure, however cleverly built, however fine the materials, however beautiful the architecture and the style, if it does not have foundations. This city has foundations—which speak of permanence. Think of the buried cities continually being discovered by archeologists, the great urban civilizations which once thrived, then died and were forgotten in history. The city of God will have foundations and will be a permanent city, eternally permanent. Jerusalem is her prototype.
It was at the site of this city that Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek (see Genesis 14:18) long before it became Jerusalem. It was at the site of this city where Abraham offered his only son Isaac to God (see Genesis 22:9). This was the royal city where the throne of David was established. This is the city where Solomon built the Temple, and Herod rebuilt it. This was the city of the prophets. This was the city where Jesus Christ was crucified and rose again
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from the dead. This was the city where the Holy Spirit of God descended and the New Testament church was born. Plundered and destroyed at least four times before Christ, then razed to the ground in A.D. 70, this city still stands and significantly remains the site of the most stubborn, perennial, international dilemma in modern history. Remember Isaiah's prophecy 700 years before Christ? "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulders; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth, even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this" (Isaiah 9:6,7).
Abraham "looked for a city which has foundations, whose architect and maker is God." Did you notice the last line in Isaiah's prophecy, "The zeal of the Lord will perform this"? Now the author of Hebrews is quite explicit that this city which represents the consummation of Abraham's hope—the consummation of
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the hope of all those from Adam to the last person who will ever live—was to be conceived and built by God. God is the architect; God is the maker. This is not something man has done, is doing, or will do. This is totally and exclusively the doing of God. This is not some utopia which is supposed to evolve out of human progress in history. This is that which God will give! This is that which God will introduce into history, cataclysmically! Catastrophically! This is that toward which Abraham and all other faithful ones through the centuries have been longing and looking, and they shall not be disappointed. This is that for which Jesus Christ died to redeem man. This is that for which He calls and commissions His church; not just to make this world a better, more comfortable place in which to live, but to be busy calling out from every race and people and language and color, a people for His name—a peculiar people, a royal priesthood—to live with Him and reign with Him forever!
You may choose to live and die for the communist paradise if you wish—that classless society for some future generations—and go to your grave without hope. You may choose any of the panaceas of
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modern man's sociological, humanitarian, political or economic schemes and go to your grave without hope. Or you may look for "the city of God which has foundations." And if you go to your grave before Christ returns, or if Christ comes again before you go to your grave, your hope is absolutely guaranteed. This passage is the sacred record of men and women in history who merited the commendation of God. It is absolutely clear in the record that these faithful ones were indifferent to this life, this world and its order. Indeed they almost held it in contempt. The world was not worthy of them. They were strangers and pilgrims. They "declared plainly that they seek a better country that is heavenly; that they were strangers and pilgrims. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for He has prepared for them a city."
This is authentic faith. It looks beyond the grave. It centers its confidence in an eternal promise. It waits and works and suffers and dies with that eternal promise in view. This is that which the church needs today. We are not here just to repair this old world and make it as good as possible. We are here to call men and women to follow Christ; to call people out of this world into
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His church. To call them to look for "the city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God." This is our mission! This is Christian relevance! God grant that we who profess Christ may outlive, outlove, outsuffer, outsacrifice, outdie the disciples of any other scheme or program of men, for the sake of Christ; for the sake of lost, eternally doomed humanity; for the sake of an eternal home—an eternal city.
