Foundations for Christian Mission, Mentor's Guide, MG04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

All the Hopes of Israel and the Church Are Found in a City

III. The City Is the Picture and Symbol of our Spiritual Destiny and Inheritance

All in all, we find the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes, the realization of God’s promises to her; the manifestation, in a city which has the glory of God, of the reality already declared by the heavens and the firmament; and the answer to all aesthetic yearnings and national aspirations in the place to which the kings of the earth bring their glory. Of this city the reborn are citizens, and to it all pilgrims of faith tend. The city is also described as the Lamb’s bride; it is in another aspect his church for which he died, the pattern and goal of all human society. In the last analysis this chief of scriptural cities is men, not walls: just men made perfect, the city of the living God. ~ J. N. Birdsall. “City.” The New Bible Dictionary . 3rd ed. (electronic ed.).

A. The hope of the saints and the sages: a city whose maker and builder is God

1. The old Negro song of expectation, “There’s plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in my Father’s Kingdom . . . choose your seat, and sit down!”

2. We are sojourners, pilgrims, aliens, having here no lasting citizenship, home, or identity. We belong to a coming age, a new order under the reign of God, in a city designed for us, 1 Pet. 2.11-12.

3. The nature of faith is to have no permanent place in this world but look for the city built by God, Heb. 11.10.

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4. God has prepared for his holy ones a city.

a. Rev. 21.9-10

b. Heb. 11.13-16

B. The symbol and reality of our eternal destiny is to dwell in a New Jerusalem , not where God is absent and arrogance rules, but where God is present and Jesus is adored as Lord of all.

Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996. p. 209.

1. Rev. 21.2