May our spiritual eyes see that Christ’s Galilean circle of fellowship is the New Jerusalem about which the apostle Paul tells us:
One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.
This is the Jerusalem about which Isaiah prophesied:
You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”
Clearly God wants the New Jerusalem to be the praise in all the earth now. And He has given us the grace and power in His Holy Spirit, everything we need, to win this great victory. Truly He is talking about the Kingdom of God when He tells us of the New Jerusalem.
And the Kingdom of God is a spiritual Kingdom. It is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirt (Rom. 14:17). It comes without observation. It is at hand. Jesus tells us that His Kingdom is not of this world and that we must be born again to see it. We enter into this Kingdom through much tribulation.
Jesus told men during His earthly ministry:
I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God come with power. (Mark 9:1).
And certainly those early believers did see His Kingdom come with great power. They saw themselves filled with the Holy Spirit that they might continue the compassionate and mighty acts of Jesus of Nazareth. They saw Jesus come to sit on the throne of David in the throne rooms of their regenerate hearts to direct them in paths of righteousness. Jesus told his disciples He was going away and the world would not see him anymore but that He would come again to His own to dwell within them and they would see Him (John 14). He kept that wonderful promise to those early disciples just as He keeps it today for all who love Him.
The church needs to see Him today. Man-made devices must be cast aside as believers rest in Jesus, so yielding to the King of the New Jerusalem that He fully occupies the prepared and welcoming thrones in hungry hearts with such power that lightning and thunder roll across the Heavens and everyone knows that God is in our land.
The New Jerusalem is in the capital city of the people of God, the House of Israel, the Holy nation. Jesus said that He came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. If we have accepted Him as our Redeemer, then we are of that house, numbered among the children of God of whom Jeremiah spoke when he said that God would one day make a new covenant with the House of Israel (Jer. 31:31-34). When we accepted Christ, we were no longer strangers to His new covenant and He accepted us as citizens in His Israel (Eph. 2:12). We too became of the seed of Abraham, named in our beloved Jesus. And Christ gave us a Land of Promise to conquer and possess — not the kind of land that is taken with tanks and guns, but a beautiful place in Him that is won with love and harmony by the free gift of His grace.
He told us that He would one day gather His people from the many places they were scattered and bring them back into the beautiful land He had for them. His people, those who love Him and are called by His Name, have been scattered in many strange places: places of fear, greed, and disharmony. But today, Christians are uniting in love and fellowship and returning to the Land of Peace and Righteousness. We see Jesus sprinkling the cleansing water of His Word on us, bringing us alive in Him. Truly as we walk in Him, we are being brought back into the Land of Faith, known so well by our kinsman, Abraham, who walked by faith and courage. We are being brought back as God pours out His Spirit on us, enlightening our understanding and delivering us from the dead letter of the law into life in the Spirit.
With our spiritual eye, we see a wonderful thing taking place as bones that were once dry come together, preparing for God to breathe yet more life into them so that, united by His love, they will stand upon their feet a mighty army for our God (Ezek. 37).
Truly, when not walking in Christ, we are dry bones, dead. We may live in fine houses, have adoring families and many pleasures. But without Jesus, we are still in the grave. Jesus told the Sadducees “I am the resurrection and the life.” When we accept Jesus, He raises us up out of the grave we were in before we knew Him and He brings us into the land of the living.
Just as Jesus told His disciples many centuries ago to raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out demons, and cleanse the leper, so He commands us today to do these same works. The works of God are to believe on the One whom God has sent. Jesus raised multitudes from the dead during His earthly ministry, not just a few who, like Lazarus, were physically dead, but thousands who heard Him preach and saw His miracles. He raised the multitudes who let His Word take root in their innermost being unto salvation. He calls all Christians today to such a ministry of reconciliation that, by reaching out to others by His love, we might raise our neighbors from death and then help them remove the binding grave clothes that hinder their walk with Christ.
Our Lord speaks plainly of this matter (Ezek. 37:12-14):
…Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O my people. I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.
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