THE CITY OF GOLD
A sermon by Dr. F W Boreham
Printed in an Australian Baptist magazine [no date] and found in Dr Boreham’s desk. This may well be an article especially directed towards the children who read the magazine.
The service at Virginia Creek was being held in Longberry‘s barn, and the old schoolmaster was conducting it. “I want to speak to you,” he said, “about a city, a wonderful city, a city that came down from God out of Heaven. And my text,” the little man exclaimed with sparkling eyes, “my text is this: ‘And the foundations of the city were garnished, with all manner of precious stones, and the streets of the city were of pure gold; and the twelve gates were twelve pearls.’1 Foundations of jewels; Streets of gold! Gates of pearls! I involuntarily glanced around me, and was struck by the riveted attention, which the preacher had already secured.
I.
“I have here,” he said, taking from his pocket, a glittering piece of cut glass, “I have here an exact replica of the Koh-i-noor, the famous diamond.2
You see how small it is; I have taken it from among other things in my waist coat pocket. Yet the diamond on which this is modeled is worth £2 million. Think of it! You could sell that tiny gem, and, with the money, build a huge battleship, or erect 2000 houses costing £1000 each!
I could not help noticing the boys and girls of Virginia Creek. Most of them were leaning forward, with their forearms on the back of the seat in front of them, whilst their eyes sparkled, almost as brightly as the model that glittered in the preacher's hand.
“And John saw,” he went on, “that the foundations of the city that came down through the clouds, were of precious stones like this. Think of the size of the city; think of the value of this, one little gem; and then imagine the costliness of these great foundations. What did the vision mean? It meant that the things on which the city of God – the city of God on earth – is based, are all of them very, very precious. In the long evenings that you spend in your homes, the preacher said, “get a concordance and look up the word precious. You will be surprised at its frequent recurrence. You will find references to the precious Word, the precious promise, the precious faith, the precious blood of Christ. And you will find one inspired writer saying of the Saviour that, unto you who believe, He is precious. You will see that all those things on which the city of God rests are unspeakably precious, for the foundations of the city are of precious stones.
II.
Whilst his hearers watched, with almost strained intensity, the old man slipped the imitation diamond back into one waistcoat pocket and took a fountain pen from another. “I never quite understood the streets of gold,” he resumed, “until one of my daughters gave me a fountain pen. Till then, I had always written with steel pens. Each pen was beautifully clean when it was new, but how quickly the ink corroded and spoiled it! I have had my fountain pen for five years now; and see! Although the ink has been flowing continuously through this gold nib all the time, it is as clean and as bright today, as on the day when I first received it. It is gold, and you cannot defile it. Now the streets of cities are not the cleanest places in the world – in any sense! But if you walk the ways of the city of God, you will find that those streets are all of pure gold. They are not only under undefiling and undefiled; they are undefilable.” It was all very brief, but wonderfully telling.
III.
The old man replaced the fountain pen, and from his bag upon the table, he took an oyster shell. “And the twelve gates,” he repeated, “were twelve pearls. I wonder,” he explained, glancing at the boys and girls, who were still craning forward, their necks in rapt attention. I wonder if you all know how pearls came into the world. Do you know, he went on, just before I came here this morning, I found a little lassie in great pain. She had got something Into her eye. And what happened? The tears came and did their work of cleansing, and soon the pain was gone. Now, a pearl,” he exclaimed, holding up the shell, “a pearl is the tear of an oyster! When the little creature is in great pain, and has been irritated by some substance that has invaded its shell, as the speck had invaded my little friend’s eye, it emits a secret fluid, not unlike the tears that came to the rescue of the little girl. And that fluid covers up the irritating substance and, crystallizing, it becomes a pearl. A pearl is the lovely monument to the oysters' pain. As the foundations of jewels stand, therefore, for the preciousness of those things, on which the city of God rests; and, as the streets of gold stand for the purity of those ways in which its citizens delight to walk, so the gates of pearl stand for the pain that we must be prepared to endure if we would enter that fair city. We do not prize the things that cost us nothing. We love most things for which we have suffered most.
The preacher quietly returned the oyster shell to the bag on the table. “No,” he said thoughtfully, as though soliloquising on his own long experience, “no, there is no way of entering the city, without cost or suffering, or sacrifice or persecution of some sort. There are twelve gates, it is true, and every gate is a pearl. Every avenue of entrance to the city, it is built on sapphires, the city whose streets are of pure gold, is marked by pain. But the city of God is well worth all that it may cost to enter it.
As we came out into the sunshine, I could see that the boys and girls of Virginia Creek had learned the lessons of the cut glass, the fountain pen, and the oyster shell, and were eager to become citizens of so beautiful a city.
Revelation 21: 19-26, King James Version.
Wikipedia, “The Koh-i-Noor (Persian for 'Mountain of Light'; /ˌkoʊɪˈnʊər/ KOH-in-OOR),[b][4][5] also spelled Koh-e-Noor, Kohinoor and Koh-i-Nur, is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, weighing 105.6 carats (21.12 g).[a] It is part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. The diamond is currently set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. [It is now in the possession of King Charles III]