The Heavenly City

1 He looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.’ — Heb. xi. 10 (R.V.).

73 MAN can be in the land of promise, and yet not feel at home. ‘He sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, But why these feelings of the vagrant? Why this sense of homelessness in the promised land? In the verse which precedes the text we are told that in the land of promise Abraham dwelt in tents; and the shifting tenure made the country appear perpetually strange. Tent-life gave him the consciousness of a changing and uncertain possession. He pitched his tent here to-day, and for a few short hours he tasted the delights of possession. But on the morrow the tents had to be moved again, and there rushed back into the patriarch’s soul all the restless uncertainties of a vagrant. His inheritance was shifting, movable, and transient. He was possessor

only by spasms. There was no rich, unbroken, continuous life, to create in his soul the settledness of home.

And yet, what was the voice which Abraham had heard? ‘To thee will I give the land.’ That was the promise, and Abraham knew that the promises of the Lord God are not honeycombed with uncertainties. He knew that the promised lands and possessions of the Lord God are not to be held on precarious tenure. If tent-life gave him only a shifting possession, then he knew that the promise was not yet fully matured, and ‘he looked for a city, a city ‘which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.’

We must emphasize the contrast between the city and the tent. The patriarch lived in the tent: he looked for the city. The tent has no foundations. Its holdfasts are only for transient usage. They are made to be easily changed. The city has foundations. It is stable, fixed, and permanent. The tent is the symbol of vagrancy: the city is the symbol of home. The tent is associated with the evanescent and changing: the city is associated with the continuous and the abiding. Abraham dwelt in the land of promise in tents, but ’ he looked for a city, He longed for settledness. He yearned for the abiding.

Now we are all the children of promise. A kingdom has been promised to us; not a material kingdom, traversed by lines of latitude and longitude, but a spiritual kingdom, the inheritance of the saints in light. This kingdom abounds in ‘things that are freely given to us of God ’ — moral forces, spiritual graces, strengths and beauties from the sanctuary of the Eternal. Some of us have crossed the borders of the land. We are in the kingdom of promise. But how? Some are in the kingdom in shifting tents. Others are in the kingdom in settled cities. Some people’s religious life is full of a restless change; others have a life full of a deep and fruitful homeliness, of rich and assured peace. How many of us only enjoy the kingdom by spasms! We have short seasons of possession. We are dwellers in tents, and have no fixed and settled abode. It is the gracious purpose of our Lord that our religious life should be a certain and continuous possession. He wants it to be a ceaseless ’ abiding,’ and not a few detached and uncertain seasons.

Here is part of the promised inheritance: ‘I will give you rest.’ Have we got a fixed house in that land, a settled home? Do we abide in His rest, or have we only got a tent possession? Do we only have infrequent

seasons of rest — rest for a day, and then on the morrow are we troubled, foot-sore wanderers again? In this land of rest have we only a tent? Let us look for a city.

Here is another element in the promised lot: ‘My joy I give unto you, ‘My joy ’ — spiritual cheeriness, the light of the Father’s countenance, a radiant hopefulness, a religious gladness. Such is the land. Have we settled homes in it, or only shifting tents? Do we 1 rejoice evermore, or is our joy irregular and uncertain? Let us look for the city.

Our peril is that we become contented v with the tent-life. We become satisfied with religious fragments. We have no strong, violent hunger for a religious life of heroic and unbroken consistency. We become contented with religious seasons, and all the while our Master is pleading with us to ’ abide in Him,’ to ’ rest in Him, to make Him our fixed ’ dwelling-place, and our ’ eternal home.’ Let us eagerly listen to Him, and, leaving the vagrant tent-life, seek ‘the city which hath foundations, and ’ dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’