We know our hearts are easily divided, going our own way, away from the Lord. David is praying that God would keep him from being two-faced and double-minded, and that God would give him a single, steady aim, unmoved by the threats and pressures, only looking to God and His great name.

My father-in-law has challenged us as a family to learn Psalm 86:10–13 this year. It’s a wonderful psalm full of rich encouragement of how to live when under pressure. At the end of the psalm, David even fears for his existence, and the main message of the psalm is how to lay hold of God in times of personal need. The key to the whole psalm is the last phrase of verse 11: “Unite my heart to fear your name.” There is nothing like pressure to show how divided our hearts are. It is as if the circumstantial pressure exposes the spiritual fault lines of our hearts.

The structure of the psalm is like a sandwich; verses 1–7 and verses 14–17 are a cry for help, and in between, in verses 8–13, is the meat with a section on the praise of God.
The psalm begins with David pleading for God to answer him: “Incline your ear . . . answer me . . . be gracious . . . gladden my soul” (Ps. 86:1, 3, 4). He addresses himself to the “LORD,” using the name that God revealed to His covenant people. David recognizes that he is in a relationship with God. It is as if he is saying: “This is who I am, and this is who You are, so Lord, be all that You are to me.”
As we move into verses 8–13, God, and not David’s circumstances, dominates. You’ll notice the Lord is spelled without the small capital letters—it’s a different name in the Hebrew from “LORD.” The “Lord” (without small capital letters) focuses attention on God’s might and power. God is immeasurably great. There is nowhere else to go when dealing with life’s difficulties. The majestic power of God marks Him out as unique. There is no alternative deity that can demand universal worship, and that is the big reason that he prays, “Unite my heart to fear your name” (Ps. 86:11). God is One, there is no other. In Deuteronomy 6, Moses tells the people: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

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The Spirit comes to us as an earnest, a pledge, a down payment on final redemption. He is here and now the foretaste of future glory. But His presence is also an indication of the incompleteness of our present spiritual experience.

How do we distinguish the promptings of the Spirit of grace in His guiding and governing of our lives from the delusions of the spirit of the world and of our own sinful heart? This is a hugely important question if we are to be calm and confident that the spirit with whom we are communing really is the Holy Spirit.
John Owen suggests four ways in which the Spirit and the serpent are to be distinguished.
1. The leading of the Spirit is regular.
The leading of the Spirit, he says, is regular, that is, according to the regulum: the rule of Scripture. The Spirit does not work in us to give us a new rule of life, but to help us understand and apply the rule contained in Scripture. Thus, the fundamental question to ask about any guidance will be: Is this course of action consistent with the Word of God?
2. The commands of the Spirit are not grievous.
They are in harmony with the Word, and the Word is in harmony with the believer as new creation. The Christian believer consciously submitted to the Word will find pleasure in obeying that Word, even if the Lord’s way for us is marked by struggle, pain, and sorrow. Christ’s yoke fits well; His burden never crushes the spirit (Matt. 11:28-30).
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Jerusalem the old was a Sodom (Rev 11:8), an Egypt (Rev 11:8), a Babylon (Rev 14:8, 16:19, 17:5, 18:2, 18:10, 18:21). As Sodom was overrun by evil, so too was Jerusalem. As Egypt was an oppressor of God’s people, so too was Jerusalem. As Babylon was self-righteous and proud, so too was Jerusalem. Jerusalem was unfaithful to God, having had every opportunity to return to the Lord yet choosing to continue in rebellion. Therefore, Jerusalem the old was fully warned of judgment, entirely given chance to repent, and then fully rejected that chance and thereby received judgment in 70 A.D.
The “old” Jerusalem was the place given many nicknames. It was the historic city home to the Jewish leadership that crucified the Lord Jesus. While it was supposed to be the epicenter of loyalty to the One true God, it became the place of execution for the Son of God. The “new” Jerusalem is something different from the historic city of the 1st century. What the “old” Jerusalem could and should have been, is what the “new ” Jerusalem would certainly be.
With old Jerusalem’s downfall squarely in view in Revelation 18 and 19 the question then arises: Why does Revelation then talk about a “New” Jerusalem?
While the book of Revelation has many nicknames for the unfaithful “old” Jerusalem, there are a few times Jerusalem is mentioned with great excitement and goodness. A fascinating feature of Revelation is how Jerusalem is explicitly named. The 1st century historic Jerusalem is always referred to via symbolic nicknames. A”new” Jerusalem is mentioned by name explicitly 3 times in Revelation (3:12, 21:2, 21:10).
The reason I keep calling Jerusalem either “old” or “new” is because this is how the text of Revelation speaks of Jerusalem. The first time Jerusalem is mentioned by name in the book of Revelation it is accompanied by the word “new” (τῆς καινῆς Ἰερουσαλήμ):
Revelation 3:12 (ESV): The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
This “new” Jerusalem originates from God. This “new” city has as its founder none other than the Almighty. The name of the city is “my own new name”. The speaker in Revelation 3:12 is the resurrected Lord. This is Jesus, speaking of a new city, which has its beginnings from God, whose citizens will be those who conquer. Those who conquer are those who have kept Christ’s word and not denied his name (Revelation 3:8).
We begin to see in this first citation of the “new” Jerusalem that it is a group of people who are loyal to Christ. They are a special people who are given a unique name from Christ. Together, they form a group of people established by God. We begin to see how this “new” Jerusalem is not primarily about a geographic space, but is primarily about a particular people.
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