FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: Is that the old ship of Zion? (part 3)

Welcome, friends, to the "front porch."

In our last visit, we climbed aboard that “Old Ship of Zion,” examining the deck of the church of our Lord.

Zion, of course, stands as a great emblem of the city of David of the Old Testament and now reminds us of the church of the New Testament.

As the apostle writes so beautifully, “But ye are come unto Mount ZION, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels” (Hebrew 12:22.)

Long before Paul writes in Hebrews, Isaiah foretells of the coming of this great Zion, the Lord's church, in the early paragraphs of his prophecy.

In short, he announces, the day will come when the “mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established” up high on a mountain, and there – there in this place called Zion – the gospel shall trumpet forth for the first time.

How many gospel preachers and teachers have opened up that scripture to discuss the beauty and history of the Lord’s church!

Sometimes men forget such scriptures and prophecies and look back to the nineteenth century, to noble men such as Barton Stone or Alexander Campbell, and say, “There it is. There is where the church of Christ started.”

But the church of our Lord does not start there, by any means.

The church’s establishment and existence are cemented in heaven long before its borders expanded to Europe or to America. Inspired writers such as Isaiah and Jeremiah anticipate her coming throughout their Old Testament prophesies. “Out of Zion shall go forth the law,” says Isaiah, and he adds that God’s Word shall proceed from Jerusalem!

Indeed, “out of Zion”! Not America or Europe, but beautiful, beautiful Zion!

At Zion the church of our Lord would go on to be established some six hundred years after Isaiah and Jeremiah wrote. The apostle Peter stands up over in the second chapter of Acts and delivers the first gospel message after Jesus ascends to heaven. His message is not a man-made one but was a sermon written from the very pen of the Lord.

Shortly before Pentecost, the Lord lays out a clear sermon outline for Peter: I want you to preach “repentance and remission of sins… in (my) name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47).

Peter is completely loyal to that command, preaching that sermon with as much vigor as he had ever before mustered, right there in the city the psalmist once called Zion. When his sermon about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus comes to a climatic end, the audience cries out, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

Peter does not drop the ball at this pivotal moment the way he had done before. But led by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he answers boldly, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).

What happens next reminds us of the powerful vision Isaiah sees in Isaiah 2. Isaiah sees “all nations… flow unto” this Zion.

And sure enough, on the great day of Pentecost, there on the western slope of Mount Zion, many “gladly received his word (and) were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).

The second chapter of Acts records the birth of this new Zion, the church of our Lord. That glorious day the hopes and dreams of centuries past are finally realized – there on the hill of Zion about A.D. 33.

Around A.D. 33 is when the Lord’s church is established. And on Pentecost of that year the very first gospel invitation is offered, and men respond to that gospel resoundingly and take their stand in Zion, in the church of our Lord.

Its existence is no longer in prospect or in hope but in full reality. That day “the Lord added to the church those who were being saved.”

I wonder if you are a member of that church today, if you have been added to the blessed church of our Lord by being “baptized into Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38; Galatians 3:26; Romans 6:3).

Step on board that old gospel ship today and sail toward our heavenly Zion.