O thou afflicted
The city of God
The reference is still to Jerusalem.
In the former paragraph, she was addressed as a barren wife; here as destined to arise from her encumbering ruins, and become the joy of the whole earth. Of course, the primary reference is to that actual rebuilding which took place under the direction of Nehemiah. But there is a further and more spiritual meaning. These words must refer to that city of God which is ever arising amid the ruins of all other structures. Watched by the ever-attentive eye of the great Architect, wrought by unseen hands, tested by the constant application of the line of truth and the plummet of righteousness, and emerging slowly from heaps of rubbish into strength and beauty. A description is given of the pricelessness of the structure, the privileges of the inhabitants, and the safety which is assured by the Word of God; and let us not hesitate to appropriate this blessed vision. It is put clearly within our reach by the assurance with which the chapter closes, that this is the heritage of all the servants of the Lord. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
God’s promise to the afflicted Church
I. THE LOW AND AFFLICTED STATE OF THE CHURCH.
1. She is deeply distressed; and the language of Divine compassion towards her is, “Oh thou afflicted!” Piety exempts from future wrath, but not from present trouble. Saints have their afflictions in common with others.
2. The Church of God is also described as being “tossed with tempests,” like a ship driven from her anchors, carried to and fro by the boisterous waves, and ready every moment to be swallowed up. A storm at sea also well represents the terrors of an awakened conscience, and the agonies of a mind in deep distress; when awful providences are joined with inward darkness, so that one trouble excites and sharpens another.
3. The Church is afflicted, “and not comforted.” Sometimes light arises out of darkness, and God comforts His people in all their tribulations: but here every species of relief is withheld.
II. THE COMPASSION OF GOD TOWARDS HIS AFFLICTED PEOPLE, AND THE PROMISE MADE FOR THEIR RELIEF. “Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours,” etc. This is as if the Lord had said, I will turn thy sorrow into joy, thy tears into triumphs.
1. The Church is here represented as a building, whether as a common dwelling or a temple is immaterial. The materials are various. Some are placed in a more conspicuous situation than others; but all are useful and necessary, in different degrees. The various parts of the edifice require to be united, in order to form an entire structure; a confused heap of materials, scattered and unconnected, afford no idea of a building. A temple is designed for worship, and a house for habitation; the Church of God is designed for both.
2. The several parts of this building are next described; the stones that are to be laid, and also the foundations. None but spiritual materials, none but living stones are fit to make a part of this building. The foundation of this building is Christ Jesus. All true believers are united to Him, and rest their eternal all upon Him, as a building rests upon its foundation.
3. We have a promise of future felicity, and glory to the Church. “I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with sapphires.” These expressions may imply--
(1) The Church’s worth and excellency.
(2) Its comeliness and beauty.
(3) Its firmness and stability. The precious stones and the sapphires, with which this building is to be erected, are durable as well as beautiful, and expressive of the perpetuity of the Gospel Church.
(4) Its future glory. The Church shall indeed be raised to a greater degree of glory in this world; but she shall be transcendently and eternally glorious in the world to come. The future glory of the Church, as predicted by the prophet, is similar to that of the New Jerusalem, which the apostle saw descending from God out of heaven. Let then the afflicted Church, and individual believers, bless God for such a promise! Let them exercise faith and patience, and wait its full accomplishment. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
The city of God
I. THE PRICELESSNESS OF THE STRUCTURE. What an enumeration of precious stones! Let us consider what jewels are. A jewel is a bit of ordinary earth which has passed through an extraordinary experience. Then there is a special fitness in this address to the afflicted people of God.
I. Foundations of sapphire. Underneath our live, underpinning the history of the world of men, the one ultimate fact for us all is the love of God. They are stable. They are fair.
2. Windows of agates. Agates are varieties of quartz, and bear evidently in their texture the mark of fire. Indeed, they are always found in the igneous rocks, from which they drop out when such rocks decompose under the action of water and air. The agate is partially transparent; not opaque, as flint; not transparent, as rock-crystal--it admits light, tempering it as it passes. God makes windows of agates; He takes our sorrows and makes them windows through which we may gaze into the unseen. In sorrow we see the unsatisfying nature of the world, and the reality of the unseen; we learn to appreciate the tenderness and delicacy of human love; we have insight into the meaning of God’s providences; we behold the value and truth of Scripture.
3. Gates of carbuncles. There is a good deal of uncertainty as to the precise stone indicated by the Hebrew word rendered “carbuncle.” It seems better, therefore, to take the suggestion of the duplicate vision in the Apocalypse, and to think of gates of pearl. The pearl is said to result from the infliction of a wound in the oyster, which leads it to throw out the precious fluid that congeals into a pearl. If so, every pearl on the neck of beauty is the lasting memento of a stab of pain. At any rate, each pearl commemorates the hazard of human life in the diver’s descent into the ocean depths. It is true of life; all our outgoings into wider ministry, nobler life, greater responsibility of blessedness, are due to the precious action of sorrow, self-sacrifice, and pain. There is no gate into the life, which is life indeed, which has not cost us dear.
II. THE PRIVILEGES OF THE CHILDREN OF THE CITY.
1. They shall be all taught of God. It is a deep and helpful thought that God has opened a school in this dark world, and has Himself undertaken to act as Schoolmaster. It is the Father who teaches. “He knows our frame,” etc. To be taught of God is to be led by His own hand into a perfect knowledge of the mysteries of redemption.
2. “Great shall be the peace of thy children.” We have first peace with God, through faith in the blood and righteousness of Christ; then the peace of God, which here is called “great,” and elsewhere “that passeth understanding.” Some parts of the ocean laugh the sounding-line to scorn. You may let out 1,000, 2,000, even 6,000 fathoms, and still the plumb falls clear. So it is when God’s peace, driven from all the world, comes to fold its wings of rest in the heart. It is better than joy, which falters and fluctuates; better than the ecstacy which may have its reactions. And these two rest on each other. The more you know God, the more peace you have; because you find Him more worthy of your trust.
III. THEIR SAFETY. The waster fulfils a useful function: the knife that cuts away the dead wood; the fire that eats out the alloy; the winnowing fan that rids the wheat of the chaff; the east wind tearing through the forest; the frost crumbling up the soil; the vast army of animals that devour and destroy. “I have created the waster to destroy.” This is the strong Hebrew way of saying that God permits, and overrules, and brings out good by means of the evil that had seemed destructive of all good. (F. B.Meyer, B. A.)
Zion’s foundations, windows, gates, and borders
I. THE STATE, CHARACTER, AND CONDITION OF THE SUFFERING CHURCH OF GOD. “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted.” Every one of these expressions is pregnant with heavenly meaning.
1. “O thou afflicted.” Affliction is one of the marks that God stamps upon His people.
2. “Tossed with tempest.” Some are tossed with a tempest of doubts and fears; others with a tempest of lusts and corruptions; others with a tempest of rebellion and fretfulness; others with a storm of guilt and despondency; others with gloomy forebodings and dismal apprehensions. Thus are they driven from their course, their sun and stars all obscured; no clear evidences, no bright manifestations; darkness above and a raging sea beneath; breakers ahead, and no harbour in sight.
3. But the Lord adds another word, “not comforted”--that is, not comforted by, not capable of comfort from, man. This I look upon as a very decisive mark of a work of grace upon the soul. God has received the Church’s comfort in His own hands; from His lips alone can consolation be spoken into her soul.
II. THE BLESSED CLUSTER OF GOSPEL PROMISES THAT GOD MAKES TO HIS SUFFERING CHURCH. “ Behold,” He says, as though He would draw her special attention to the work that He was about to perform. “ I will lay thy stones with fair colours.” The Lord here seems to take the figure of a building; or rather of a temple, for His people are compared to a temple.
His work upon their soul He compares to the work of an architect, or a builder who lays stone upon stone until he puts on the top-stone with shoutings of grace, grace, unto it.
1. The first promise that He makes relative to this building of mercy is--“I will lay her stones with fair colours.” This seems to be general description of the work of God in rearing up the spiritual building before Ha fair colouring. But in the words, “ I will lay thy stones with fair colours,” there seems to be a reference also to the cement in which the stones are laid, as well as to the stones themselves. What is this cement? Is it not blood and love?
2. But the Lord goes on to particularize His work. He speaks of her “foundations,” her “windows,” her “gates,” and “borders,” and He tells us how they are all severally formed and made. Beginning at the beginning, He describes the material and laying of her foundations--”I will lay thy foundations with sapphires.” Before we can stand firmly in to things of God, we must have a good foundation, something solid for our faith, our hope, our love, our all to rest upon. But what is a sapphire? A precious stone, the distinguishing feature of which is its peculiar clear and beautiful colour--a heavenly blue. I would not press the figure too closely, but may it not fitly represent from its nature and colour a special gift from heaven? What a mercy for you if your faith has such a sapphire for its foundation; when you do not rest upon the bare letter of God’s word, but upon the testimony of God laid into your soul.
3. But the Lord also adds--“and I will make thy windows of agates.” What is a window for? Chiefly to admit light and air, and also to give us a prospect of the scenery without. But the windows are of “agate.” Glass in those days was not used for windows; it was known for various other purposes; for it has been lately found in Nineveh, as well as in the tombs of Egypt; but its use for windows is of comparatively modern date. But why are they made of agate? Though not as clear as glass, it is what is called semi-transparent, that is, sufficiently transparent to admit a considerable amount of light. The sun shining through a window of agate might lose a portion of its brightness, but not much of its light. Upon Zion in her time-state the Sun of Righteousness does not shine in all his brightness. The windows of agate whilst she is in the flesh temper his rays. Her prospects, too, are not fully bright and clear. We have not those clear views which the saints have in glory where they see Jesus face to face.
4. But the Lord speaks also of Zion’s “gates.” These gates are to give admission to the temple which He is rearing for His own habitation. But of what material are the gates? These, too, like the foundations and windows, are of precious stones. “And thy gates of carbuncles.” Now we must not be too fanciful in our interpretation of God’s word; yet, doubtless, the Spirit of God chose these jewels with some peculiar meaning. The carbuncle is of a blood-red colour. And why should the Lord have chosen that Zion’s gates should be of this peculiar colour? May we not believe that there is some mystic allusion here to the blood of the Lamb? But what are gates for? Entrance and exit. Zion has her gates of exit and entrance. She has her gates of access to God, entrance into the presence of the Most High. And who has opened the door, or rather who has not only opened it, and made it, but Himself is it? “I am the door,” saith Jesus; and was not the door opened through His rent flesh? (Hebrews 10:19-20). But gates not only give admission but exit. Not only do prayers, supplications and tears, rise up with acceptance through the gates of carbuncle, and thus enter into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, but promises also, tokens, testimonies and visits come down. And as every prayer, to be a prayer, is breathed through the gate of carbuncle, through the blood of the Lamb, so every answer, that is an answer, comes down through the same consecrated channel.
5. But the Lord also speaks of Zion’s borders. He tells us He will make “all her borders of pleasant stones.” There shall be nothing common about her. No architect pays the same attention to the courts and outbuildings that he pays to the mansion itself. If the mansion be of stone these may be of brick. Not so with God, Zion’s Divine Architect. Zion’s very borders, courts, outbuildings, are all of the same material with the mansion itself. Thus God’s providential dealings, which often form the outward setting of His inward mercies, are of pleasant stones. But for whom are these mercies? The meritorious? the diligent? the industrious? We read not so. “O thou afflicted,” etc. What 1 are all these mercies for such as they? They are the only persons who will prize them, or glorify God for them. (J. C. Philpot.)
Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours
The decorations of Nature
Nature’s temple is not a hueless, monotonous structure like the pyramids of Egypt. It is richly decorated. It is overlaid with chaste and beautiful ornamentation. Every stone is painted with fair colours, accurately toned, and in perfect keeping. Not a rock that peers above the surface of the earth but is clothed with the rainbow tints of moss and lichen, and wreathed with the graceful tenderness of fern and wild-flower. Every mountain is clothed with the variegated verdure of forest and pasture, blending gradually upwards into the sober grey of crag, and the silvery whiteness of snow, and the quiet blue of the cloud-flecked sky. And when the living hues of plants are absent, there is compensation in the rich colours of the rocks, or in the bright reflections of the heavens. The brilliant crimson of Sinai’s granite and sandstone cliffs makes up for their naked sterility; and if the mountain ranges of northern Europe are destitute of the emerald verdure of the Alps, they are covered instead with purple light as with a robe, and gather out of the sky at sunrise and twilight hues softer than the plumage of a dove, and more radiant than the petals of rose and violet. Even works of human art are decorated by nature with a picturesque glory of colour and light, in harmony with her own landscapes. The castle or the abbey, left untenanted, falls into ruin; but Nature--whose profound peace succeeds all strife of man, and whose passive permanency mocks his fast-perishing creeds--steps in to claim her reversion; and wherever her soft finger touches, there new beauties spring up and shame the artist’s proudest triumphs. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
The adornments of grace
As Nature deals with the materials of her framework, so the Divine Artificer deals with the living materials of His spiritual temple. Every stone that is fit to be built into the walls of His holy habitation is richly sculptured and decorated. He leaves none in the meanness and vileness of their natural state. He digs them out of the fearful pit and the miry clay that they may be chiselled and polished, so as to be ornaments of the structure in which they stand. He makes the Sun of righteousness to shine upon the dark vapour-cloud of their nature, and thus paints it with the rainbow hues of grace. Black in themselves, He makes them comely in the reflected light of His love. From the moment that the favour of God is restored to them, they are wakened to a new existence and a better principle. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Stones with fair colours
I. WHAT ARE THE FAIR COLOURS WITH WHICH THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER IS ADORNED?
1. Humility is one of the most conspicuous of them. It is the soft purple hue of the lowly violet, hid among its leaves, and known only by its fragrance; of the fruit when it is ripest; of the hills when most saturated with sunset light, and most like Heaven. It is the ornament which, in the sight of God, is of great price; it is the secret of true refinement and distinction in the eyes of men; it is the glory of the inner man renewed in sanctified self-denial and self-forgetfulness. By nothing is the genuine believer distinguished from the mere formalist and hypocrite more than by his humility.
2. Patience. It is the tender green of the grass, which, through summer’s heat and winter’s frost, remains unchanged, which may be trampled under foot and injured in every way, and yet retains its vitality unimpaired.
3. Benevolence. It is the quiet blue of the sky, which shines upon the just and the unjust, which sends down rain and dew upon the evil and the good. This is the virtue which counteracts the natural selfishness of the heart, and takes us out of ourselves. It is by the uniform and enlarged exercise of it that the disciples of the Lord are distinguished from the people of the world, who are ever intent only upon their own interests and pleasures. It is by their benevolence that they are assimilated to the Universal Giver, whose tender mercies are over all His works, and are never exhausted--to the compassionate Saviour, who though He was rich yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich, and whose meat and drink on earth was to go about continually doing good--to the holy angels, whose happiness is increased by seeing sinners repenting on earth, and by being sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation.
4. Zeal. It is the ruby hue of the blood which circulates through the veins, and animates the whole body with life and vigour. It is the crimson heat which energizes or melts everything it, and pervades all with its own glow. It stimulates to the performance of every duty, infuses life into every experience, fervour into all devotion, spirit into all work, and overcomes difficulty as fire overcomes every resisting object.
5. Moderation or temperance. It is the golden mean between two extremes--the safe though narrow path between opposite evils that come veryclose to each other. It is the soul’s centre of gravity.
6. All these and other graces are summed up in charity. As every lovely hue is light, so every lovely grace is love. This is the rainbow which gathers up and harmonizes all other qualities, and bends its Divine beauty over the whole life of the Christian. It is the genus of which all the Christian virtues are the species. Patience is the attitude of love, zeal is the energy of love, humility is the upset of love, benevolence is the acting of love.
II. WHAT ARE THE PROPERTIES OF THESE FAIR COLOURS?
1. They should be harmonious. They should be developed proportionally, so that each, instead of detracting from, may add lustre to the other. Though the graces are possessed by the believer in various degrees of perfection, yet in every person some one or other is predominant, becomes so conspicuous as to colour the rest, and give the whole character its prevailing hue. The New Jerusalem above will be a glorious city, because there shall be gathered together, in varied but harmonious splendour, the brightness of the diamond, the ruddy flame of the topaz,, the deep green of the emerald, the shining gold of the jasper, the milk-white filminess of the onyx, the heavenly blue of the sapphire, the lovely violet of the amethyst, the burning changes of the opal, and the soft beauty of the pearl!
2. The fair colours with which God lays the stones of His spiritual temple are not superficial. There is no plating, or enamelling, or veneering. Grace works from within outwards, renews the heart, and thus transforms the life.
III. HOW ARE THESE FAIR COLOURS PRODUCED? God is their author. It is He who says, “I will lay thy stones with fair colours.” They are not the spontaneous products of our own corrupt nature, nor even the forced growths of our own careful cultivation. The beauties of holiness are no mere fancy-sketch, no original picture. They are a copy of the Great Master. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
The co-operation of providence and grace
The work of the Spirit is aided by God’s providential dealings without. It is to the “afflicted, tempest-tossed, and not comforted,’ that God says, “Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours.” I have seen a literal fulfilment of these words in Nature. It is a remarkable circumstance that the most brilliant colours of plants are to be seen on the highest mountains, in spots that are most exposed to the wildest weather. The brightest lichens and mosses, the loveliest gems of wild flowers, abound far up on the bleak storm-scalped peak. One of the richest displays of organic colouring I have ever beheld was near the summit of Mont Chenelettaz, a hill about 10,000 feet high, immediately above the great St. Bernard Hospice. The whole face of an extensive rock was covered with a most vivid yellow lichen, which shone in the sunshine like the golden battlement of an enchanted castle. There, in that lofty region, amid the most frowning desolation, exposed to the fiercest tempests of the sky, this lichen exhibited a glory of colour such as it never shows in the sheltered valley. I have two specimens of the same lichen before me, one from the great St. Bernard, and the other from the wall of a Scottish castle deeply embosomed among sycamore trees; and the difference in point of form and colouring between them is most striking. The specimen nurtured amid the wild storms of the mountain-peak is of a lovely primrose hue, and is smooth in texture and complete in outline; while the specimen nurtured amid the soft airs and the delicate showers of the lowland valley is of a dim rusty hue, and is scurfy in texture and broken in outline. And is it not so with the Christian who is afflicted, tempest-tossed, and not comforted? Till the storms and vicissitudes of God’s providence beat upon him again and again, his character appears marred and clouded by selfish and worldly influences. But trials clear away the obscurity, perfect the outlines of his disposition, and give brightness and beauty to his piety. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
The world unfavourable to beauty of Christian character
But though the trials of life are well fitted to bring out the fair colours of the Christian character, there is a sense in which the world may be said to be unfavourable to them. Its climate is not like the glowing air and the clear sunny sky of Egypt or Italy, which embalm architectural remains in imperishable beauty, and present the temples erected ages ago as sharply-defined in their sculpture, and as fresh and undimmed in their colouring as if built only yesterday. Iris like our own misty climate. It is difficult to preserve the beauty of holiness in a world lying in wickedness, to keep the garments unspotted from the flesh. The fair colours of grace require to be constantly renewed, polished, brightened. But as Christians, another Will than your own has begun to work in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. And your holiness will surely spread in spite of every opposition over your whole nature and life, transforming you in the renewing of your mind, preserving you from the pollutions of the world, and preparing you for being presented faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
The beautifying power of Divine grace
These fair colours of grace are within reach of all. In nature there is hardly a stone that is not capable of crystallizing into something purer and brighter than its normal state. Coal, by a slightly different arrangement of its particles, is capable of becoming the radiant diamond. The slag cast out from the furnace as useless waste, forms into globular masses of radiating crystals. From tar and pitch the loveliest colours are now manufactured. The very mud on the road, trampled under foot as the type of all impurity, can be changed by chemical art into metals and gems of surpassing beauty. And so the most unpromising materials, from the most worthless moral rubbish that men east out and despise, may be converted by the Divine alchemy into the gold of the sanctuary, and made jewels fit for the mediatorial crown of the Redeemer. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
“Fair colours:”
Antimony was the costly black mineral powder with which the Eastern women painted their eyelids to throw up the lustre of their eyes. The dark cement in which the gems of the walls, gates, battlements, and even the foundations of the City were to be set, and which was to enhance their brilliance, was to be composed of this costly pigment. (S. Cox, D. D.)
And lay thy foundations with sapphires
Foundations of sapphires
By the sea-shore we find samples of many of the rocks which form the crust of the earth. The commonest specimen among them has something to commend it either in colour or in form. It is assuredly not of worthless and unsightly materials that the hidden parts of the earth are constructed. Unlike man’s work, which is carefully elaborated only where the eye is intended to see it, God’s work is the same throughout. Not only is beauty lavished upon the superstructure--upon the grass, and the flowers, and the trees, that are to meet the gaze--but the very foundations are composed of onyx stones and stones to be set, glistering stones and of divers colours, and all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance. A similar principle appears throughout the spiritual creation, of which the scheme of nature is only the visible picture. In the moral works of God as well as in the natural, beauty is combined with utility--grace with strength. He lays the foundations of the general Christian Church, and of the individual Christian character, with sapphires. Those hidden principles and motives upon which the grand superstructure of faith and charity is guilt, are not only strong and steadfast, but beautiful. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
The sapphire
The sapphire is one of the brightest and most valuable of those mysterious unfading flowers of the inner earth which we call jewels. Born of darkness, stranger to the light, it yet holds in its core of focussed rays the blue of heaven. Gentians, violets, forget-me-nots, calm lakes and summer skies, glacier-depths and living springs, have their passing and perishing loveliness enshrined and concentrated in its heart of rock. There is one variety, of a singularly soft pure azure, which has the power of retaining its lovely memory of heaven, even by candlelight, when an ordinary sapphire looks black. It is sometimes found in masses of considerable size, and may therefore appropriately be spoken of in connection with foundations. It formed the pavement, like the body of heaven in its clearness, under the feet of the God of Israel, as seen by the elders in Exodus; and the throne of glory which appeared to Ezekiel in vision resembled a sapphire stone. It was the fifth precious stone in the breastplate of the Jewish high-priest, and had the name of Simeon engraved upon it; and the second foundation of the New Jerusalem is a sapphire. The minute account in Exodus and Revelation, of this and other jewels that adorned the sacerdotal apparel and the walls of the heavenly city, indicates the symbolic reverence attached to their use by the Jews. And this belief in their mystic qualities passed from India and Persia to Greece and Rome, and after playing a considerable part in the Gnostic systems of Alexandria, became finally transferred to the Christian Church, as we find Bishop Marboeuf of Rennes, in the eleventh century, versifying their talismanic influences in his curious “Lapidarium.” Even St. Jerome praises the sapphire for its use in conciliating to its wearer the favour of princes, quelling his enemies, dispersing sorceries, setting free the captive, and even assuaging the wrath of God himself. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Blue
Blue is an exceedingly lovely colour. It is quiet and subdued, attracting without dazzling the eye, suggestive of peace and repose. It is the most universally distributed of all hues. It forms the pleasing background of nature, on which the more brilliant colours of tree and flower and field come forth to arrest our attention, not only by their own beauty, but also by the force of contrast. We see it in the boundless expanse of the sky which bends over and idealizes our dull cold earth, and forms, with its varied changes, a part of the landscape, not the mere empty space that surrounds it. We see it in the distant hills, that assume on the horizon the azure colour of the sky, from sympathy of beauty and peace. We see it in the far-stretching ocean that covers three-fourths of the surface of the globe; in the lake, the river, and the stream, the mirrors which reflect and spiritualize the changeable beauty of earth and heaven. We see it in the blue-bell that rings out the pensive requiem of nature’s mutability on quiet autumn eves; and in the human eye, the most wonderful of God’s works, which reflects the world without and the world within--which is at once useful as an organ of vision, and beautiful as a spiritual and expressive window of the soul And as in the temple of nature, from the viewless air to the ethereal lustre of childhood’s innocent eye, the hue of the sapphire predominates, so in the tabernacle and temple of old it was pre-eminent, being always mentioned in connection with gold in the enumeration of the sacred furniture. As the gold was emblematic of the glory and majesty of God, so the blue combined with it, in the sacred appointments of the tabernacle, might be aptly employed to represent His love and grace. Such an interpretation would be in strict accordance with the symbolism of nearly all nations, among whom blue has always been associated with ideas of love. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
Sapphire foundations
We may therefore understand the sapphire foundations of the Christian life which God lays, to be, in general terms, the love of God in Christ; His general love in providence, and His particular and surpassing love in redemption. It is on this beautiful and serene background that all the great manifestations of grace given to mankind are displayed. The temple of Solomon was built on the rocky foundation of Mount Moriah, a place consecrated to the work of redemption, from the time when Abraham offered there the ram which the Lord had provided, instead of his son Isaac, and the destroying angel sheathed there, by the threshing-floor of Araunah, the sword of judgment, on account of David’s sacrifice. And so the spiritual temple is also built upon the work of redemption as its sapphire foundation. What beautiful emblems of Christ’s love are the two grandest objects of nature--sapphire sea and sapphire sky! The boundless extent of heaven’s blue field cannot be measured even by the astronomer, so the length and breadth, and height and depth of the love of Christ surpass all knowledge. Or, to take the sea as the comparison, the sea touches the shore along one narrow line, and all the beauty and fertility of that shore are owing to its life-giving dews and rains;, but it stretches away from the shore, beyond the horizon, into regions which man’s eye has never seen, and the further it recedes, the deeper and the bluer its waters become. And so the love of Christ touches us along the whole line of our life, imparts all the beauty and fruitfulness to that life, but it stretches away from the point of contact into the unsearchable riches of Christ, the measureless fulness of the Godhead--that ocean of inconceivable, incommunicable love which no plummet can sound, or eye of angel or saint ever scan. The Hebrew word sappir, translated sapphire in our version, is derived from the same root as the words that signify a book, writing, or engraving; and according to the Talmud, the two tables of stone, on which the Law was written on Sinai, were formed of sapphires. Blessed be God, it is not on the sapphire foundations of the Law that we are now to build our trust. The obedience that can rest on these foundations must be perfect in every jot and tittle, and perpetual, without cessation or suspense, without question or doubt, from the beginning to the end of life. But such an obedience we cannot rear. Christ’s finished work is now our sapphire foundation. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
‘‘I will lay thy foundations with sapphires:”
The structure of our faith is four-square, like that of the temple of old. The chief corner-stone which binds the whole together is the redemption-love of Christ; but connected with it as a foundation for the believer’s stability and hope, is--
1. The covenant of grace, embracing every blessing from the first moment of incipient peace in the soul to the consummation of that peace in heaven, extending in its administration to the most minute particulars, making ample provision for every evil that can possibly happen to us, and securing calmness in the prospect and in the hour of death.
2. The revealed truth of God is another sapphire foundation connected with the precious corner-stone.
3. The experience of the believer is yet another sapphire foundation. The objective revelation of the Gospel has been followed by the subjective operation of the Spirit. The outward teaching of inspiration has become an inward Divine illumination. The doctrine has become a living power whose strength has been tried and proved; the Divine announcement has passed into the form of a human experience; the creed is no mere formula of speech, no mystic incantation, but “corresponds with needs of his soul, which he has probed to the bottom in the hour of difficulty.” In short, Christ proclaimed by Old Testament types and prophecies, revealed in the Gospels, preached in the Apostolic Acts and Epistles, has become Christ formed in the soul the hope of glory. The sapphire is one of the most precious jewels; ranking next to the diamond in value. It is precious for its own beauty and rarity, and precious on account of the labour revolved in obtaining it. And who can estimate the preciousness of the sapphire foundations of our faith, the work of redemption which cost the humiliation, suffering, and death of the Son of God to accomplish; and the experience of the truth in the soul wrought out through much sorrow, through doubts, and fears, and terrible struggles? The sapphire is also one of the purest of the precious stones. The ancient meteoric stone called the Kaaba, built into the sacred mosque at Mecca, and still pressed with devotion by the lips of every pilgrim, may be taken to represent in its blackness and earthliness, the Mohammedan religion. But the foundation of Christianity is a pure transparent sapphire. It has no flaws, no dross, no earthy ingredients. These foundations are steadfast and enduring. They are not composed of perishable materials--not even of rocks that weather and crumble away--but of sapphires, next to the diamond the hardest of the precious stones. Jewels, as a class, are the most lasting of all earthly objects--the most beautiful as well as the most imperishable form in which matter appears. They are therefore expressive types of stability and permanence. The sapphire foundations of the Christian life are everlasting. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)