Pastoral Voice
GOD’S REMEMBRANCE OF HIS CHURCH (part 1)
(Meditation by Rev. Rodney Miersma, Standard Bearer Vol. 87, No. 15)
“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are continually before Me”
(Isaiah 49: 16)
Dearly beloved saints of CERC,
The church of Christ! There is no cause on the face of the earth that is a more sure cause than the church of Christ. The kingdoms of this world may grow until presently; they present a united front of almost unbelievable power. The church at the same time will seemingly dwindle down to almost nothing, so that Jesus Himself asks, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth? (Luke 18: 8).” Yet as Daniel saw in the dream that God gave Nebuchadnezzar, the stone cut out of the mountain without hands – which is the church of Christ – grinds the kingdoms of the world to powder and becomes a large mountain that fills the earth.
In the text above, our attention is called to the certainty of the church’s triumph. It is a passage that shows us that the church will attain to all its glory and beauty because God never forgets her, but remembers her in the Son of His love, Christ Jesus our Lord.
God is speaking here to Zion, which in verse 14 of Isaiah 49 is complaining that God has forsaken and forgotten her. “But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.” Zion is another name for God’s church. It was upon Mount Zion, one of the four hills upon which Jerusalem was built, that David placed his throne. Often Jerusalem was called Zion. The whole city was known by the one famous hill where the king’s palace stood. Thus we read in Psalm 87: 2, 3, 5 “The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her.” Zion is that city of God. This text speaks of the gates of Zion, referring to the gates of the city and not simply to the hill on which part of the city was built. The idea is not simply that men were born in the king’s palace, but that they were born in the city of Jerusalem. And Jerusalem is often pictured in scripture as the church of God, including all the New Testaments saints among the Gentiles. The members of that church are at the same time the citizens of the kingdom of God. We are not to make a distinction between Jews and Gentiles, as though the believing Jews are the kingdom and the believing Gentiles are the church. In Revelation 3: 12, Jesus Himself is addressing a Gentile church, the church at Philadelphia and He declares to these Gentiles, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.” The Gentile believer has a part in the kingdom, for Jerusalem is the capital city of the kingdom. And the Gentile believer becomes a pillar in the temple, which was the centre of the whole Theocracy of the Old Testament times. Therefore there is also the statement in Psalm 87 that God loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. That it is called the city of God means that God loveth all His elect people, Jews and Gentiles alike, and dwells in them in love.
