The “Not-Seen” City That Has Foundations

The City that Abraham looked for was not heaven.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going… [10] For he was looking for the city that has foundations, whose builder and Maker is God (Hebrews 11:8-10).

The next chapter goes on to say that Abraham looked forward to that city, but that we Christians have come to it now. It’s the City of God, the bride of Christ.” What was Abraham looking for? It was not heaven!!! It was a place on earth. Heaven is not even mentioned in the text.
A city is a government. The Greek word for city is polis, from which we get the word politics. Anyone looking for a city (a government) is involved in politics. Someone heard me on the radio and called. They said, “You’re just a politician” and hung up. I inherited it from our father… Abraham.
There are two basic governments on earth: the City of God & the City of Man. The City of Man has no foundation. “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1Co 3:11). Every government that is not built on that foundation will crumble like the Tower of Babel did. The same is true of individual government and family government.
Before God called Abraham the world spoke one sole language. To save themselves, they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city… and let us make a name for ourselves.” This is the pattern of man’s fallen nature. And this is what man has done ever since. But it always ends the same way. God rejected all the nations at Babel because they made a name for themselves instead of for God. But God so loved his enemies that He chose one man…Abraham and promised that all the nations would be blessed thru him.
In the very next chapter after Babel (Gen 12:1) God said to Abraham, “Get out of your country, … To a land that I will show you.” So Abraham set out to look for that city, that government whose builder and Maker was God. At that time Abraham was living in Ur of the Chaldees. Ur was a socialist state that owned all the property, all the animals, all the souls, and even all the tools. God said, “Get out.”
Later God told Abraham his descendants would go down to Egypt and live there for 400 years. This was the work of preparation to build His government. “Ya gotta go down before you can go up.” Pharaoh had ended up with the same socialist power that Ur of the Chaldees had had. God sent a famine so the people sold their animals to get grain from the government. When the grain ran out, they sold their land to get food from the government. When the food ran out, they sold their souls as slaves to Pharaoh. America is headed that way, too, in an effort to build another Tower of Babel.
After 400 years in Egypt, God sent Moses to put God’s law for His City in writing. The law is our school-master to bring us to the land of promise. “Tell Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, ‘Let My people go.’” Go and do what? Go & look for the City of God.
God’s people today are becoming slaves to statism just like Israel in Egypt. God keeps telling the kings of history, “Let my people go.” Freedom from state control! “Get out.” Statism has no foundation, no absolutes. No rule of law. They make up their own laws that change with their mood swings. God’s law is written in stone. It is unchangeable & absolute. Jesus did not come to abrogate it. He came to fulfill it (Mat 5:17ff).
During the American War of Independence, what the English called, “the Scots Irish Presbyterian Revolt,” God was saying to the king of England, “Let My people go.” God still says, “Let My people go and build a city based on God’s law.” Raabi Daniel Lapin says, “the knowledge of God is one of the most conspicuous Berlin Walls dividing our cultural landscape.” I say, “Mr. Obama, tear this wall down.” …. It’s time for another tea party.
Modern Babel Builders
Statists keep changing their politically correct rules every time they have a period! (And men have them, too.) They have no foundation. Nothing but feelings. Democrat Congressman Dick Durban said he wanted to remake America into the kind of America liberals want. They hate the kind of America the founding fathers wanted. These Big Brother builders of Babel reject God’s Law because it interferes with their vision of America. They think the Constitution is silly. They’re looking for a city whose builder and maker is man. Which is sillier? The Constitution or silly men?
Plato’s Republic groped for an ideal city also, but not like the one Abraham “looked for. The king of Babylon even made a tall image of man to represent the City of Man, and demanded that the whole world bow to it. Men still do it today. These Big Brothers want to save the people with handouts like Obamacare. To look to the government for security is to take the mark of the beast. It’s like saying, “We have no king but Caesar. Crucify Him and give us insurrectionists like Barabbas.”
But now, since Jesus came, believers have come to the City of the Living God. John saw it coming down. The Head is in heaven and the feet are on earth (Heb 12:22). This was the vision of Abraham. The foundation of God’s City is the Rock, Christ Jesus. God demands that the governments of men be built on that foundation. John heard “loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘THE KINGDOMS OF THIS WORLD HAVE BECOME THE KINGDOMS OF OUR LORD AND OF HIS CHRIST’” (Rev 11:15)!
The progressives have their loud voices demanding a vision of the utopian city they are looking for: the great society like Egypt and Ur of the Chaldees. God says, “Get out … To a land that I will show you” (Gen 12:1). And that city was not heaven! God demands that human governments have one altar to that same God. “In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt” (Isa 19:19). Not just in heaven.
That’s why early Christians established explicitly Christian nation states. Armenia was the first, then Georgia around 300 AD, then Rome, then the Franks, and later Charlemagne, then England with Alfred the Great, then, all of Europe became Christendom. After the Reformation, Saxony, Scandinavia, Geneva, Holland, Scotland, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony established explicitly Christian governments. America was the result. God made a decree for the church: “Kings shall be your foster fathers, And their queens your nursing mothers” (Isa 49:23). So God chose governments like Cyrus the Great, Constantine, and the U.S. Constitution as foster fathers and nursing mothers for His people. “That which has been is what will be” (Ec 1:9).
This is still the goal of Abraham’s children: Christian nation states built on God’s law. Why? Well, why not? Because Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
God so loved the world that He gave His only son to save it. God’s plan is to save the world.

All the ends of the world Shall remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations Shall worship before You. For the kingdom is the LORD’S, And He rules over the nations... A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, That He has done this” (Psa 22:27-31).

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Mat 28:19-20). The duty of government is to be the nursing mother of the church. The City that has foundations is not just in heaven. It must manifest itself on the earth.
Jesus prayed, “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15). “Go therefore and disciple all the nations” (Mat 28:9-20).
God said Abraham’s descendants would possess the gate of their enemies (Gen 22:17). The gate of ancient cities is where the seat of the governments was. The Cities of Man are the gates of hades (the entrance to the place of the dead). The end result of statism is death. Look at the millions of aborted babies. For Jesus, Jerusalem was the gate of hades. He went there and was killed. But He promised, “I will build My church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” He destroyed it forty years later.
The City of Man seeks to take away our God-given rights of life, liberty and property. Just as Ur of the Chaldees and Pharaoh owned all the property, and all the souls, so the City of God also demands our property and our souls. The difference is slavery for one and freedom for the other. If the City of Man can give you rights, they can take them away. If the City of God can give you life, liberty, and property, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” because it was His in the first place. But the City of Man can only take away because the god of this world comes to steal property, kill life, and destroy liberty.