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I. THAT GOD BEARS A DIFFERENT RESPECT TO PLACES SET APART AND CONSECRATED TO HIS WORSHIP, FROM WHAT HE BEARS TO ALL OTHER PLACES DESIGNED TO THE USES OF COMMON LIFE.

1. Those eminent interposals of the Divine providence for the erecting and preserving such places, will be one pregnant and strong argument to prove the difference of God's respect to them, and to others of common use.

2. The second argument for the proof of the same assertion shall be taken from those remarkable judgments shown by God upon the violators of things consecrated and set apart to holy uses. A coal, we know, snatched from the altar, once fired the nest of the eagle, the royal and commanding bird; and so has sacrilege consumed the families of princes, broken sceptres, and destroyed kingdoms.

3. The ground and reason why God shows such a concern for these things is that He has the sole property of them. It is a known maxim, that "in Deo Runt jura omnia"; and consequently, that He is the proprietor of all things, by that grand and transcendent right founded upon creation. Yet, notwithstanding, He may be said to have a greater, because a sole property in some things, for that He permits not the use of them to men, to whom yet He has granted the free use of all other things. Now, this property may be founded upon a double ground.

(1) God's own fixing upon and institution of a place or thing to do His peculiar use. When He shall say to the sons of men, as He spoke to Adam concerning the forbidden fruit, of all things and places that I have enriched the universe with, you may freely make use for your own occasions; but as for this spot of ground, this person, this thing, I have selected and appropriated, I have enclosed it to Myself and My own use; and I will endure no sharer, no rival or companion in it: he that invades them, usurps, and shall bear the guilt of his usurpation. Now upon this account, the gates of Zion, and the tribe of Levi, became God's property. He laid His hand upon them, and said, "These are Mine."(2) The other ground of God's sole property in any thing or place is the gift, or rather the return of it made by man to God; by which act he relinquishes and delivers back to God all his right to the use of that thing, which before had been freely granted him by God.

II. THAT GOD PREFERS THE WORSHIP PAID HIM IN SUCH PLACES ABOVE THAT WHICH IS OFFERED HIM IN ANY OTHER PLACES WHATSOEVER.

1. Because such places are naturally apt to excite a greater reverence and devotion in the discharge of Divine service than places of common use. The place properly reminds a man of the business of the place, and strikes a kind of awe into the thoughts, when they reflect upon that great and sacred Majesty they use to treat and converse with there: they find the same holy consternation upon themselves that Jacob did at his consecrated Bethel, which he called "the gate of heaven": and if such places are so, then surely a daily expectation at the gate is the readiest way to gain admittance into the house.

2. Because in such places it is a more direct service and testification of our homage to Him. For surely, if I should have something to ask of a great person, it were greater respect to wait upon him with my petition at his own house, than to desire him to come and receive it at mine.

(R. South, D. D.)

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KJV: The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.

WEB: Yahweh loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.