TWO CONTRASTING CITIES - BABYLON AND JERUSALM
Books which outlive the generation in which they were written are called “classics”. On e of these which I remember from my schooldays is Charles Dickens’ story of the French Revolution, "A Tale of Two Cities". It concerned a family caught up in those tumultuous days, as it affected them in their lives, in both London and Paris. It’s the tragic story of a Frenchman, Dr Manette, who for no fault of his own was wrongly imprisoned, in the infamous Bastille dungeon for eighteen years. After he was freed to go and live in London his son-in-law, a French nobleman hated by the revolutionaries went to Paris to help someone in trouble, and he too was imprisoned on false charges and sentenced to the guillotine - but more of that later. I’ve given this brief outline of the story as it’s a parable of life.
The Bible could equally well be entitled "A Tale of Two Cities", because the two cities most frequently mentioned, literally and symbolically, are Jerusalem and Babylon. Right the way through they is seen as opposites. This isn’t a coincidence, for the Holy Spirit has taken the two cities to symbolise two diametrically opposed principles. Jerusalem represents the eternal and the heavenly, while Babylon depicts things that have no abiding value, the earthly.
Both represent fallen mankind but there’s a great divide. Jerusalem is a picture of those who have been redeemed and brought back into fellowship with God, but Babylon pictures those still in bondage to sin. The Bible history of these two cities reveals a hostility and tension between them. It illustrates the spiritual battle between good and evil, the flesh warring against the Spirit. These two principles of life cannot co-exist. Let’s see how it began and trace its development. First:
BABYLON
In Genesis we’re told how fallen men sought to build a city, but it was more than a new town. "Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves" (11:4). This wasn’t an innocent building development - it was an attempt to dethrone God. The city became known as "Babel", and was the beginning of Babylon.
The first Babylon was the heart of the ancient world and its centre of power. Its people attempted to create a city as a divine gateway to an earthly paradise, and this is reflected in the name they gave it, Babil, meaning "the gate of the gods". But the Creator God would have none of it: he called it Babel meaning "confusion". God thwarted their scheming by confusing their language (7) so that they were unable to understand each other. They left their city half-built and the inhabitants scattered over the face of the earth. We must go on to think about:
THE CONTINUING BABYLON
Babylon, of course, represents the fallen world. But it would be wrong to rubbish the achievements of the human race. We’re made in the image of God and, although fallen beings it would be odd if our aspirations and longings didn’t contain some noble and good, and yet there always seems to be an element of evil that threatens to ruin the whole. Mixed in with ambition to succeed there’s greed; mankind manages to pollute the environment in careless exploitation of the earth’s resources; and the human race turns its back on its Maker and his rules of life with its desire to increase in wisdom and knowledge. This is Babylon, the city of man - it’s a city without foundations; in fact, it’s built on sand.
The words of Genesis, "Let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to heaven" reveals the whole story of fallen man. The emphasis is on "us" and "ourselves" - it’s man-centred. It shows the spread of disorder within God’s world. From the beginning man has sought to bridge the gulf between earth and heaven by his unaided efforts; to regain paradise lost, to bring in the Golden Age of equality, justice and peace. It’s been the guiding force of the great human personalities of history.
I like to watch the political party conferences on television and hear their leaders’ eloquent speeches to their followers - if words were sufficient the country would be a great place to live in! Yet so often it all ends in tears - the ideals hoped for turn to ashes. When society breaks the bounds of God-given order, and tries by itself to reach heaven, like with ancient Babel, the results are only frustration and disintegration.
This century has seen two world wars, and after each the nations resolved that the bloodshed must never happen again, and so there were established, first the League of Nations and then the United Nations. I thank God for the good that has come in looking after refugees and peacemaking, but really nothing has changed, for every decade has seen wars and uprisings in different parts.
All attempts to produce a human paradise on earth, often with the best of intentions, have failed and will fail, because they represent a "city without foundations". The foundation of God’s truth, righteousness and salvation is missing. Human history is the record of how fallen mankind has followed in the same pathway. Without God, the best of ideals crumble into failure and loss. This wasn’t what God intended for his creation, so we come to:
THE CALL TO LEAVE BABYLON
Shortly after the account of Babel we’re told us that there was a God-fearing man - his name was Abraham - living in one of the neighbouring cities who received a revelation from God to move out from that anti-God location and be led to another land where God could be honoured. It was a major step to take. We’re told in the letter to the Hebrews, "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 . . . for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God" (11:8,10).
Abraham was a man of culture, belonging to one of the aristocratic families of his day, living in the centre of civilisation, but when God appeared to him in a glorious revelation (Acts 7:2), he saw the city of God in the person of the God of glory. How he saw the Lord, or what he saw, we don’t know, but from that moment he couldn’t settle for anything less. From then on he "looked for the city which has the foundations".
The splendour of his native city, its education and culture, meant nothing to him now. He saw it had no true foundations: that it was built on the sands of human genius, human ability and human pride, and that it must, therefore, pass away. From that point on in the Bible, there are only two cities to which men and women can belong: Babylon or Jerusalem. As the biblical story unfolds, the choice becomes clearer, as individuals, families and nations make the decision to follow good or evil, the broad or the narrow way, of faith in God or unbelief. But we can thank God that he hasn’t left mankind in the confusion of Babylon because he’s creating a second city:
JERUSALEM
From the very beginning of time God’s desire was to have fellowship with his creation. The first inhabitants of the earth failed to fulfil this great desire that God has to live in the hearts of men and women. We’ve seen that the call came to Abraham and he obeyed and moved out in faith. Although he visited Jerusalem, Abraham never lived in it, but eventually the city became the nation’s capital.
The Psalms and the prophetic books have many references to Jerusalem or Zion as the city or dwelling of God, but although the nation of Israel was chosen by God as his special means of revealing himself to mankind, it fell into evil ways, bringing upon it calamity and punishment. Even its holy city of Jerusalem was captured and plundered by hostile nations. We know that Jesus wept over it as a city that rejected the prophets. But God had planned from all eternity something infinitely better, an eternal city. The earthly Jerusalem was but a symbol of what he was really looking for, the heavenly Jerusalem, the "city of God", the:
NEW JERUSALEM
In the last chapter but one of the Bibles there is a wonderful vision. In the previous chapters of the book of Revelation there were accounts of wars and evil beings; there was a picture of the sea in a storm-tossed condition, symbolising the nations of the world in their conflict and unrest, but now all is peace. John tells us "I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband" (21:1).
Here we have two symbols - "the bride", suggesting intimate union, and "the holy city, the New Jerusalem", representing a community of people under God’s government. Taken together they speak of God’s desire that his people, the successors in faith of Abraham who moved out of Babylon at the call of God, should become partakers of eternal life.
If Babylon is the product of man, the New Jerusalem is totally concerned with God. She is God’s creation where his authority is unchallenged. Babylon represented man’s rebellion and corruption, and even though it boasted a great empire, was doomed to pass away. The New Jerusalem is the symbol of the eternal. The earthly city of Jerusalem was and still is beloved of God but is only a shadow of the New Jerusalem. The New Testament writers refer to "the Jerusalem that is above" (Gal 4:26; I Pet 5:10), and of coming "to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God" (Heb12:22).
This was the city that Abraham looked for, and not him only, but also the patriarchs of Israel, Joseph, Moses, David, Samuel and many others. What is even more striking is the statement that the city was planned for, and wouldn’t be complete, without their New Testament successors (He 11:40), In other words, all who are redeemed by God are, in some wonderful way, bound up with this Holy City, the New Jerusalem.
The city is none other than the Church of Christ, encompassing the redeemed people of God of all ages, Old Testament and New Testament - yes, us as well, as many as have come to Christ in repentance and faith. We’re not spectators of the vision; we’re part of it. The city of God is what we shall be in the age to come, what in a sense we already are positionally, if not in practice, and what God is presently making of us. As we look at some of the detail of John’s vision of this New Jerusalem, the bride of Christ we’ll see what a privilege it is to be a member of this great company of the redeemed. First:
ITS ILLUMINATION
The foremost characteristic of this city is that God is in the midst of her. "The city", John tells us, "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" (Rev 21:23). Jesus himself is that light. "I am the light of the world," he said. "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). The vision states: "The nations shall walk by its light" (21:24). The gospel of Christ has a universal message - it is open to all, regardless of race, wealth or power.
The Church of Christ has the responsibility of letting the love of Jesus shine through to a dark and sinful world. The churches of John’s day were rebuked because the purity of Jesus was being obstructed by their impurity, by contamination with the wisdom of this world. Sadly this state of affairs still continues two thousand years on, but one day the full glory of God will be seen by all, driving away the darkness of ignorance and moral pollution. The vision also tells us more about the city; there is:
John’s Jerusalem was a massive and imposing structure. The great cities of the modern world would be a mere matchbox compared with what is described in the vision. There were huge gates and walls, in fact the city appears as a cube, 1,500 miles each way! Perhaps the measurements are symbolic of the breadth and height and depth of the Kingdom of God, an expression in human terms of something spiritual. It’s another way of saying what Jesus spoke of when he said "Men will come from east and west, and from north and south" to join Abraham and Isaac and Jacob there, Gentiles and Jews united in the heavenly Jerusalem (Luke 13:28,29). Millions have entered but there’s still room for more! It’s for "whosoever will may come!" The city of God, the bride of the Lamb, is also notable for:
ITS BEAUTY
The Holy City’s walls are encrusted with precious stones, every gate a single pearl, the buildings and streets of crystal-clear gold. The story goes that Dick Whittington was attracted to London because he’d heard that the streets were paved with gold - he was sadly disillusioned! But here is the reality. The prophet Isaiah had this in mind when he predicted God’s plan and purpose for his people, quoted by Paul to the Corinthian church, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (I Cor 2:9). John Wesley had caught the vision when he exclaimed on his deathbed "The best is yet to be!"
The Church of Christ of the future is portrayed here, but it’s also the Church of the present, although mainly as a shadow of what is to come. It’s a vivid reminder that anything that will have no part in the Church’s final beauty should have no place among us now. The vision wouldn’t be complete without a reference to:
ITS WORSHIP
John records in his vision, "I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple" (21:22). The Jewish Temple, like the original Tabernacle, was the place where God had said that he would meet his people, but in the heavenly Jerusalem there’s no need of a temple, because merely to be in the city, the Church of Christ, is to be with him. God isn’t tied to holy buildings, but to holy people. Our fellowship with God isn’t dependent on external things, but rather our relationship with Christ.
We’ve looked at the two rival centres of human affection - Babylon and Jerusalem. They demand that:
A CHOICE MUST BE MADE
The Bible depicts the two cities in stark contrast. Superficially the great cities of the world express the glory and power of that fallen world. Their splendid buildings dedicated to commerce and the arts celebrate human genius and human glory - they look fine on the glossy pages of books that visitors take home as souvenirs, but those outward images don’t tell the whole story - they are all part of the "Babylon" of this world. Behind its gleaming facade is the decay and squalor of a shantytown made of plastic and cardboard shacks, with violence, chaos and drug abuse.
We see on television the sad spectacle of crowds of poor, illiterate people from the countryside who have been lured to the big city thinking they can improve their lot, but have found to their cost that the fine apartments are not for them. They are now in a worse condition than they were back in the simple hardship of the jungle. What illustrations of people who have been mislead by the devil to accept his values rather than the claims of Christ?
I began with a reference to Charles Dickens’ "A Tale of Two Cities". The story ends with an act of self- sacrifice and redemption. The victim in the story was in the condemned cell, awaiting the guillotine, but his friend, Sydney Carton, although a dissolute character, who had lived a wasted life, resolved to make amends in an act of great bravery. He took the victim’s place who was then able to escape with his family back to London. That’s only a faint shadow of what Jesus did for us, except unlike Sydney Carton in the story, Jesus was the sinless Son of God, who took our place on the Cross, giving his life in atonement for our sins.
The call of God to mankind is well summarised in the words of Isaiah: "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?" (55:2). It’s an invitation which we are free to accept or reject, but must accept the consequences of our decision. Which is our choice of the two cities of life - Babylon or Jerusalem?
