 |
| Sunday, March 01, 2009
Jerusalem -- City of Promise (Part 2) Writer: Ronald WongClick here to read Part 1. But the Lord had not forsaken His children. The most important answer the Lord would ever give was about to be made known. 33 AD -- a man dressed in drabs rode into the Jerusalem, the Holy City, on a donkey. Throngs of people ran before him, shouting and singing in exuberant joy, "Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!" This is Jerusalem, the City of Promise -- brimming with hope once again; and that person was Jesus. Here came the one who said He was the Christ -- the Saviour who would reclaim Jerusalem; the one who would liberate the children of Israel, the one who would fulfil all the promises of the Lord. But they put Him to death. Was this it? Was this how the Promise would be fulfilled? Or was it never meant to be? The one who said He was the Christ hung there on the cross, ridiculed and tortured -- just outside the walls of Jerusalem. This was Jerusalem, the City of Promise, who had rejected their Saviour -- just as Jesus had mourned, "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God's news! How often I've ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn't let me. And now you're so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say?"" (Matthew 23: 37-38) Thankfully, that was not the end of the story -- the Christ Jesus rose to life again on the third day. He appeared before His disciples and followers, issuing His last instruction before ascending home to His rightful place at the throne awaiting Him in heaven. This is our God, our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him lies the Promise, fulfilled and renewed again. In Him was the answer to all those prayers. In Him was the fulfilment of all those covenants the Lord had made since the beginning -- His promises to Adam, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Solomon, to the children of Israel, and to the world. In Him lies hope -- the hope that is built on a very fundamental question, which we as Christians have to always ask ourselves and which answer we must be certain about, because without that certainty, we would crumble: is our God one whom we can trust? Imagine for a moment (though it may seem so impossible) a God who breaks His promises. Imagine a God whose words hold for nothing. Imagine a God we simply cannot trust. Everything we cling on to would be worth absolutely nothing. Everything we know would be nonsense. Everything we once believed in, we can no longer believe. Everything that we are would be subject to the whims of a random notion. Any moment, everything may drastically change. Any moment, we may be scrambling to find ourselves, and our purpose. Any moment, we may just cease to exist. In fact, there wouldn’t even be any reason to live, nor to die. Whatever hope of eternal life, or even a meaningful life on earth would become zilch. Whatever belief in anything good or just or joyful or even in the hope of such things would become pulp. But our God is not such a god. Our God is one who is faithful to His promises. He makes them, forges them, and signs them by His own blood. This is our God -- the faithful, everlasting God. And Jerusalem was the City of Promise: the physical manifestation of His faithfulness. Such a city was first promised broadly to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the concept of Canaan. It was made again to Moses. It was fulfilled through David. It was further promised to David, and to Solomon, that this kingdom would be everlasting. It is important to realise that the City had no significance merely because David chose it as his political capital, or merely because Solomon had built the Lord's Temple in it. The weight of its glory is embedded in the simple fact that it was God's promise to His children. It was chosen, affirmed and confirmed by God as His sanctuary, where His temple would be. This was expressed through His fortifying of David’s fortress throughout David’s reign, and the filling of the Temple with His presence -- those were God's signs of affirmation that indeed, this City belongs to Him: the City of God's Promise. Yet, the Jerusalem we read about in the Word is nowhere to be found today. The Jerusalem today lays right smack in the middle of an ongoing conflict tainted with bloodshed, fear and loss. Gone is Solomon's Temple that held the Ark of God, with His dazzling cloud of glory, His manifest presence. In its place, instead, is the al-Aqsa Mosque. Jews today, who still reject their true Messiah Jesus, continue to cling onto a hope that the former splendour of Jerusalem would be restored; clinging onto that promise that the Lord made to Solomon. But is it not clear that the Promise has already been fulfilled? In John 2:19, Jesus proclaimed that if "the temple" were to be destroyed, He would raise it again in three days, to which the Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" Then John succinctly evinced to us in verse 21, "But the temple He spoke of was His body." More poignant is the fact that in 70AD, the Romans destroyed the second temple in Jerusalem and ever since, there had never been any other temple built in its place. More ironic is the fact that in Matthew 24: 1-2, Jesus had already forewarned about this event that was to come. The impact of this event lies in the irony that the Jews had obstinately held on to the physical relics of their religion, as an imputed sort of hope for the Promise to be fulfilled, consequently blinding themselves from the essence of what the Promise entails, and hence never realising that the Promise had in fact been fulfilled. The greatest irony is that even after Israel's independence in 1948, and even till today, the former glory of Jerusalem is never restored; the temple is never rebuilt. Still, her people pine for such a hope. Indeed, the destroyed temple of Jerusalem had been made otiose, because something greater has already taken its place -- the everlasting, imperishable Temple of Jesus. And that is not even the end. Our Lord Jesus has made further promises -- that He would return in glory and splendour to reclaim His children: "At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other." (Matthew 24:30-31) This Promise was reiterated to us through John in Revelation 21, as though God knew that we would probably miss the point, searching high and low for our Jerusalem, for the fulfillment of the Promise -- “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God,'" (Revelation 21:2-3) and "I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it." (Revelation 21:22-24) This is the amazing beauty of our God. This is the manifestation of His promise; His reminder to us that He has not forgotten His promise. In fact, He has renewed the promise. This promise is His perfect plan that began unraveling itself since the start of human history, to the climatic arrival of our Lord Jesus, and culminating into eternity. He has shown to us that He is the Lord whom we can trust, the one whom we can place our faith and our entire purpose of existence in. This is His promise. This is the New Jerusalem, the City of Promise -- the dazzling hope that is soon to come.
|
|
|
 |
 |