Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 87 | Date: December 1, 2024 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Turn in your Bibles with me, if you will, please, to Psalm 87. We’re continuing our series of expositions from the Psalms. Today we come to a rather well-known song because of a famous hymn that we will sing later, but I think a psalm that’s seldom understood because some of the poetic imagery, some of the background, is not stated explicitly here or explained at any length.

This is actually a psalm that is a good example of what I’ve said to you: that in trying to understand the psalms, sometimes the reason we find it difficult to find the message of a given psalm, what it’s coming after in particular, is that psalms do not read like narrative. This is poetry. And we should not expect from the psalmist in poetry to explain at length the point that he’s making. Poetry is marked by brevity; it’s marked by poetic imagery. We have to consider the background—how the themes that he mentions are used elsewhere in the Scriptures, both Old Testament and New Testament—to see what that symbolism stands for, what it means, and what these cryptic references imply and entail. And this is a good example of that. I think you’ll see that as we work our way through.

This is a psalm of the Sons of Korah. We are told in the superscript, a song, that the Sons of Korah have written. The Sons of Korah were a musical guild in ancient Israel, under the direction of Korah, under Asaph. And they have written this under the inspiration of the Spirit for us.

Psalm 87:

On the holy mount stands the city he founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. Selah. Among those who know me, I mention Rahab and Babylon. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Cush. This one was born there, they say. And of Zion it shall be said, this one and that one were born in her. For the Most High Himself will establish her. The Lord records as He registers the peoples. This one was born there, Selah. Singers and dancers alike say, all my springs are in you.

Let’s bow together. Our Father, as we look into this portion of your word, we ask that you would grant the ministry of your Spirit to open our hearts and our minds to it. We pray that through it, you will renew our hope and renew our appreciation for Christ and the great kingdom that he has come and will come to bring to its culmination. We thank you for the treasures we have in Christ. Renew our hearts with that, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

A Psalm In Praise Of Zion

There can be no question, I don’t think, about the theme of this psalm. Verse one informs us at the outset that this psalm is a psalm in praise of Zion. He tells us that in the first verse: “On the holy mount stands the city he founded.” Zion, of course, is the hill in Jerusalem, just outside the gates of the old city, a hill in Jerusalem on which the temple was built. So verse 1 tells us at the outset that this psalm is a psalm in praise of Zion.

Verses 2 and 3 continue the same: “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.” And then verses 4 to 7 maintain the same focus, as we’ll see, only with a slightly narrower idea.

Now, this “praise of Zion” theme is not unique to Psalm 87. We find this throughout the Psalter. We have, in fact, something of a genre of psalms that could be called “praise of Zion” psalms. Psalm 46 is one of the more famous ones, but also Psalm 48, Psalm 76, Psalm 84, Psalm 87, the ascent psalms, and the pilgrimage psalms. In Psalm 48, I’ll take as an example verses 1 and 2: “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God. His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth. Mount Zion in the far north, the city of the great King.”

You find this throughout the Psalter. You find frequent references to the city, the holy mount, the holy hill, the temple, Jerusalem. All of these terms crop up throughout the Psalter, and often in a setting like this where that is its theme: in praise of Zion. You can’t read the Psalms really at all without noticing the prominent and the central significance of Zion or of Jerusalem in the life of ancient Israel.

It’s significant, first of all, of course, because this is the capital city of Israel. This is the city that David founded when he unified his rule from the northern and southern tribes, brought them together with a new capital city of Jerusalem, and brought the ark there to symbolize that as well. But Zion is especially important—not just because it’s the political capital of Israel, but it’s especially important and significant because the temple was there. The temple was the dwelling place of God himself.

You remember the temple, or before that, the tabernacle, the tent-like structure, has three parts to it. There’s the outer court, then there’s the holy place, and then beyond the curtain is the most holy place. Beyond the curtain is the most holy place because this is the place of the Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark of the Covenant was known to be the footstool of the Lord. This is where he dwells. It is the most holy place, then, because this is where God dwells. It’s called throughout the Psalms and elsewhere in the Old Testament, the house of the Lord. In First Chronicles chapter 28, verse two, David speaks of the Ark of the Covenant as a footstool of God. This is throne room imagery. In Psalm 9, verse 11, we read, “the Lord sits in Zion.” This is the place of his residence.

There are frequent references, like I’ve already mentioned, to Jerusalem or Zion as the holy hill, the holy mount, as we have it here in verse one. Holy because God is there. We have other Psalms that are what we’ve called entrance liturgies: “Who shall ascend the hill of the most high? Who has a right to be here?” And the question arises because this is the place of God’s dwelling, and because he is there, it is a holy place, and you cannot presume that just anyone can be there. That, of course, is symbolized in the priestly activity in the tabernacle and in the temple as well.

Now, to say all of that—that this is the dwelling place of God, that Zion or the temple is the dwelling place of God—to say that leaves it open for some potential misunderstanding. How can the omnipresent God be circumscribed inside any building, or on any hill for that matter, or any city for that matter? If he’s the omnipresent God, how can he be there?

In fact, Solomon mentions that very issue in First Kings chapter 8 at the dedication of the temple. Solomon writes, “Will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold heaven and the heaven of heavens and the highest heaven shall not contain you, much less this temple that I have built.” Later, in fact, God himself takes up that question in Isaiah chapter 66 and criticizes any who would draw those wrong conclusions from it. In Isaiah 66 and verse 1, he says, “Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. What is this house that you would build for me? And what is this place of my rest?”

So we have something of a little tension here. We have the God who is omnipresent and is said to emphasize that he dwells in the heavens, and the imagery of the earth just as his footstool. This great, omnipresent, infinite God—how is it we can say that he dwells in this temple?

On one level, both the Old Testament in the building of the tabernacle in the first place, and then again in the New Testament in Hebrews chapter 9, explains for us that the tabernacle, or later the temple, was built after a pattern. It was a copy, in fact. That’s what Hebrews chapter 9 calls it. It was a copy of the reality that is in heaven, where the real dwelling place of God is. Even that language has difficulty to understand if we understand that God is, in fact, omnipresent, but it speaks of heaven as the dwelling place of God, where God actually is, and this temple is built as something of a copy of that pattern after the heavenly reality.

And yet, there was a particular significance to that temple because there was a particular manifestation of God’s presence in that temple. We read of that in 1 Kings chapter 8 at the dedication of the temple when it was all set in place and finally done. God’s presence was signified by an overwhelming cloud. 1 Kings 8, verses 10 and 11: “A cloud filled the house of the Lord so that the priest could not stand to minister because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.”

So we have this holy place because the omnipresent, great, glorious God has given some special manifestation of his presence in that place. And so Zion, the temple, was both a palace and a temple. It was the residence of God. But it was also a temple, a place in which God dwells and where God is worshipped. And also then, because it’s a temple, it is a place where God’s people were said they could meet with God. This, of course, explains the larger setting of the priesthood and the sacrificial system. The big question is: how could a holy God dwell in the midst of a sinful people? And with the priesthood and the sacrificial system, we have it explained for us that the holy God dwells in the midst of a sinful people only by way of sacrifice, when the sacrifice is offered on their behalf, atoning for their sin.

And then, of course, if you don’t recognize that in the Old Testament, by the time we get to the New Testament, we learn that all of that is just providing the structures for understanding the person and work of Christ. All of that pointing forward to Him who makes the worship of God acceptable and possible through what He has done.

At Sinai, you remember when the instructions were first given back in Exodus chapter 25, the temple was a portable temple. It was a tent-like structure. It was a tent that was carried with Israel through the wilderness. The Ark of the Covenant was carried in Joshua’s military campaigns, symbolizing God’s powerful presence among his people. In 2 Samuel 6 and also in 1 Chronicles 15 and 16—passages that we saw way back early in this series—David was zealous to establish the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem. There had been many years in which the Ark of the Covenant had lain in almost complete neglect during the reign of Saul, with no concern for the worship of God as such during those years.

And now David has come to Jerusalem, he’s established his capital city, he’s united his reign from the northern and southern tribes together, and it is very important for David that the Ark of the Covenant now be brought to Jerusalem to show God’s presence among the people. After all, Israel’s king, David now, is not the great king. The great king is God himself, and bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem symbolizes that Israel’s king is the king under the king, that the great king, God himself, rules in Israel, and the king, David, is responsible as king to rule under the great king’s reign.

We saw in 2 Samuel 7, we’ve seen this many times, that David planned then to construct a temple for God, a permanent place for God. He had those plans in place. God interrupted and said, “No, you won’t build that temple. You’re a man of war. Solomon will build that temple.” And then in 1 Kings 8, we find Solomon’s ceremony where he dedicated the temple. And so Jerusalem now is the most blessed city in the entire earth simply because God was there. His presence was in that temple and its citizens, the citizens of Zion, the citizens of Jerusalem, were God’s people.

All right, all of that is the broader background to this psalm, and the psalms broadly are steeped in that setting. Some of the psalms, as I say, are particularly given to it in praise of Zion. But that’s what we have here in Psalm 87. Verse one: “On the holy mount stands the city he founded.” Jerusalem is a uniquely blessed city because God is there. He founded it, it says. He founded this city. In fact, David was there; David united it. In fact, the city stood there before then, under the Jebusites’ rule. But God founded the city in that he made it his. And now it has significance. And its significance is simply: God is there.

And notice it says, “on the holy mount stands the city he founded.” God did not dwell in Jerusalem, God did not dwell in Zion, because it was holy. Zion is holy because God is there. And now he’s moved in and this is the most sacred and the most blessed spot on the entire earth. So verse 1 then, the psalmist is gazing on Zion, as it were, with admiration, with a sense of pride. What a great city this is. And it’s great because of God’s presence.

Verse 2 continues the same: “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.” You can’t miss the overtones of excitement, a sense of privilege to belong to Zion. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than any other city in Israel. God’s love—unless we speak of it in terms of God the Father’s love for the Son and so on, or the Son’s love for the Father—God’s love for anything in his creation always has the overtones of sovereign election. God doesn’t love anyone because of anything in them. He told Israel that: “I didn’t love you because you were the greatest of all the people,” in Deuteronomy chapter 7. “I didn’t love you because you were more in number or more mighty than the rest. I loved you because I loved you.” And we read here in verse 2 that God loves Zion. We are to understand it by saying He loves it because He has made it His. Of all the cities of Israel, this city is blessed because God is there.

And so in verses one and two, there’s a sense of boasting, exulting, glorying in Jerusalem and in Zion. The Lord loves this city more than any other. What a privilege. What a joy to belong to this city. What a privilege to be one of the citizens of Zion. That’s the atmosphere of verses one and two.

And then verse 3 broadens the perspective just a little, and it hints of people outside Zion, outside Jerusalem, speaking of it. Verse 3: “Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.” So people outside the city, it seems, speak of Jerusalem, speak of Zion, in glowing terms. It’s almost as though the nations of the world are envious. This is poetic imagery, but it’s like Psalm 68 where the pagan nations around Jerusalem look down from Mount Hermon on Zion and they look with envy. What a blessed city this is. The Lord God is there. If only I could be a citizen of Zion. What a privilege that would be. Now that seems to be the connotations of verses 1 to 3.

And then we read “Selah.” Don’t know what that means exactly. I have a friend who did his Ph.D. work a number of years ago in Old Testament and one of his supervisors suggested that he write his dissertation on the meaning of Selah. And he said, “I didn’t do it.” He said, “because I didn’t want to be the guy who spent all of his work and his dissertation research coming up with a conclusion that says no one knows what it means.” It’s usually thought to come from a root word that means to lift up. All right, so what does that mean? Is it a musical notation? Probably. Lift up the voices? Pitch to a higher key? Something like that? Noting a transition of some kind?

Among Those Who Know Me

But then we come to verse four, and we begin this next stanza. And here it takes a strange turn. The theme broadens here explicitly to take on an international perspective. If verse 3 hinted of it, in verse 4, we have it explicit. Verse 4 is the center verse of the psalm. This is the verse that gives us the central message of the psalm: “Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon, behold Philistia and Tyre with Cush. This one was born there, they say.”

And then verses 5 and 6 continue the same. Now verse 4 speaks of these who were born there as those who “know me.” So this identifies the privilege of Zion’s people. These are God’s people. They know God. But this is where the psalm takes a surprising turn.

Verse 4: “Among those who know me, I mention Rahab.” That’s Egypt. Ancient rival of Israel, known for the days of slavery. “Babylon.” These are the bad guys throughout the Bible. From Genesis 11 at the tower on through to the book of Revelation. These are the bad guys. The book of Revelation will read, “come out of her my people.” Rahab and Babylon. Egypt and Babylon. This is the—as someone has called it—the rock and the hard place between which Israel stood. You got the mighty empire of Babylon out here to the east, and you’ve got Egypt down to the south, and these great kingdoms often in rivalry, and right between them is Israel. They’re caught in between this struggle all the time. Neither of them good people in the perspective of ancient Israel. Rahab or Egypt and Babylon.

And then Philistia. These are Israel’s ancient enemies that they never fully defeated. And then Tyre. We read them again back in Psalm 83. These are the affluent, wealthy enemies of Israel. These are the people the prophets condemn over and again. And then Cush. That’s Ethiopia. South of Egypt. South of Sudan. Ethiopia. This is the most distant.

And it seems like then, with Cush, or Ethiopia, and all these other nations, it seems to be what’s called a merism. It’s a symbol for all of the nations at large. All of the Gentile nations—all these, not only Gentile, but Israel’s enemies—all of these, verse four, “know me.” All of these boast “we were born in Zion.”

The thought expressed here then is just stunning. It’s almost unimaginable. To the ancient Jews, there could be no more awful place than Egypt, the place where they were kept in slavery for so long, where the king wanted to kill off a whole generation of them, killing their babies. Babylon, the kingdom that would carry them off into captivity, lay their city in waste, remove their king. Philistia, those enemies who were always a threat to Israel.

Now, Jerusalemites, they might well boast, “I was born in Zion. I live in this city. I was born here.” And all the other cities of Israel, you just might imagine them looking back at Zion, at Jerusalem with envy. “I wish I were a citizen of that city. That’s where God dwells.” But these people? It’s almost unimaginable. People of all the other nations, exulting in the privilege that they were born in Zion?

Verse four: “Among those who know me, I mention Rahab and Babylon and Philistia, Tyre, Cush. This one was born there, they say,” and they know God. These are among those who “know me.” Verse four. Verse five: “the Most High himself will establish Zion” in just this way. Verse six, God himself ratifies it: “The Lord records as he registers the people. This one was born there.”

So we have Jerusalemites, we have the people of Israel at large looking with envy on Zion, and now all of the enemy nations and all of the Gentile nations of the world looking at Zion and exulting, “I was born there.” What in the world is going on?

But we’ve seen that, we’ve seen it over and again, that the overall theme of the Psalter is the establishing of God’s kingdom on earth. And here, that universal kingdom—that kingdom is described as going global. If you can picture Mount Zion in Jerusalem, this hill in Jerusalem, imposing itself on the entire earth. You know, of course, Texans have a certain enviable reputation. Texans love Texas. I saw a picture of a United States map one time, and here’s all the states outlined, and there’s Texas down at the bottom center, and it’s an exploded view of it. It takes up the whole country. And underneath it says, “who cares about all the rest?” But this is the kind of way in which Zion is presented here. Zion, this hill in Jerusalem, is now exalted above all the earth. And now all the people of the earth are boasting, “I was born in Zion.”

This is God’s kingdom gone global. This envisions the conversion of the nations and their full incorporation into the people of God. Psalm 87. In this psalm, the inspired psalmist foresees the fulfilling of God’s global saving purpose. This, of course, is an echo of Genesis chapter 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17—God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations and that his seed will be like the sand of the sea.

Other Psalms express the same. Psalm 86 and verse 9: “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.” You hear that? All the nations you have made shall come. Come to Zion! Come to the temple and worship! The famous Psalm 100 tells us the same: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!”

The psalmist here is looking ahead to a coming age. And he’s saying that one day, this privilege that is ours for now, uniquely, will one day be shared the world over. One day all the nations will not just fear God, they will know God. Verse four. That’s new covenant language. And they’ll boast, “I was born in Zion. I have all the rights and the privileges of a citizen of the city of God.”

Now what we find then, and we have to back up to the larger picture here in the Old Testament, we see that in the Old Testament, Zion or Jerusalem is already taking significance that’s larger than itself. It’s something of what we might call a developing theology of Jerusalem. You’ve probably never heard that expression, a developing theology of Jerusalem. I don’t know what else to call it. But just as Hebrews 9 tells us that the Old Testament tabernacle was a copy of the temple of heaven, as it were, so also Jerusalem itself is reflective of a heavenly city, the dwelling place of God. And one day, he is telling us here, heaven will come to earth and the entire earth will be a holy city. God will move in grace in such a way that all the nations will be his, and men and women from the world over will boast, “I was born in Zion.”

So already in the Old Testament, Jerusalem and Zion become prospective of something much greater. We find that at the outset of the Psalter. You remember Psalm 2: the nations are called to kiss the son, the king who dwells in Zion. Psalm 48 in verse 1: Mount Zion is described as the joy of all the earth. Psalm 68: the Lord entering the temple in Zion with that Ark of the Covenant we saw was prospective of the ascension of Christ into the heavenly throne room as it were. Psalm 100 calls all the earth to enter the courts of the temple with praise.

And then let me read this one for you, Micah chapter 4. We have the same wording in Isaiah chapter 2, where Jerusalem, the capital city of the earth, is described:

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and peoples shall flow to it. And many nations shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore, but they shall sit every one, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

All of these passages and many more speak of Zion as the epicenter of God’s saving purpose in the world. It is from this place that God has set out to bring about his universal saving purpose. This is the place: Mount Moriah, Mount Zion. This is the place where Abraham offered his son. This is the place where David established his capital and brought the ark there. This is the place where Solomon built the temple. This is where Nehemiah and Ezra came back after the exile.

We come to the New Testament. This is the place where the Lord Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead. And what this son of Korah sees and foresees—in fact, what excites his heart such that he writes a song that we’ll sing—what he foresees is the expanding and the ultimate universal success of the kingdom of God come to earth. When he says all of these people from the nations of the world are boasting, “I was born there,” surely he’s not to be understood in a literalistic sense where physically all the people of the world were born in Jerusalem. This imagery is portraying all of the world belonging to Christ, belonging to the king, and they boast of it.

And so when we come to the New Testament, we find the New Testament writers just follow in step with all of this in terms of its fulfillment in Christ. We don’t have time to turn to it, but you might want to mark down an echo of this in Hebrews 12 verse 22, where the writer there says, “You have come.” This is to believers now and Christians. “You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem.” It’s particularly significant there. The writer of the Hebrews is writing to Jewish believers who are pressured by persecution and various things. They’re pressured to go back to the old religion. And the writer says, “What? Why would you do that? Why would you go back to that? You’ve come now in Christ. You’ve come to the real thing. You have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” In Christ, you’re already there.

There’s another echo of this psalm in Galatians chapter 4 verse 26. But first of all look here at Psalm 87 and verse 5: “Of Zion it should be said, it shall be said, this one and that one were born in her.” Now in the Septuagint translation of this—that is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament made a couple of hundred years before Jesus—it picks up on the imagery here of being born in Zion and adds a word in its rendering of this. And what the Septuagint reads in verse 5 is: “And of mother Zion it shall be said, I was born there.” You can see how they got that. It’s not in the text; “mother” is not in the text, but the imagery is there. Paul the Apostle picks up on that in Galatians 4, verse 26, where he speaks of the Jerusalem. The Jerusalem that is above, the heavenly Jerusalem, he says, is our mother. He’s simply picking up on what the Old Testament writers have said, pointing to the fulfillment in Jesus.

Only now, when we come to the New Testament, they can fill in the details. In the Gospels: Jerusalem. It was outside the gates of Jerusalem that Israel’s king was crucified. And there he established the reign of God, redeeming men and women out of the dominion of Satan and bringing them safely into the kingdom of God.

In John chapter four, we have an interesting echo of this as well, where Jesus speaks to the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman. You remember the question: “our fathers worship in Jerusalem, we now worship in Samaria, the mountain there; we have these rival mountains, which one’s gonna be right?” And you remember how Jesus responds: “It’s coming a day. In fact, that day now is, when that worship of God will no longer be localized.” We won’t need a specific mountain. The worship of God will be universalized. By the truth of the gospel and by the indwelling of the Spirit, men and women everywhere worship God in an acceptable way. There’s no need for a specific mountain. There’s no need for a specific city, no need for a specific building. God’s Spirit through the gospel indwells men and women everywhere. And every place now is holy, where they who worship him worship him in spirit and in truth.

And then we come to Acts chapters 1 and 2. In Acts 1, Jesus has been raised from the dead. He’s about to ascend to heaven. And he gives his disciples instructions: “Remain in Jerusalem for the promise of the Spirit.” That comes in chapter two, Pentecost. Why remain in Jerusalem? Why is it important for them to be there in Jerusalem? Because this is where it happens. This is the epicenter of God’s saving activity. This is where the king was crucified. This is where the atonement was made for his people. This is where he secured a people for himself and establishes God’s kingdom. Just as Pentecost comes 50 days after Passover, just as Pentecost is dependent on Passover, so also the coming of the Spirit, symbolized in Pentecost, the feast, is grounded in the atoning work of the Passover sacrifice given. “You wait here in Jerusalem, and the Spirit will come,” and on that day, the church is born. And here we have a “new man” created as Paul calls it in Ephesians chapter 2, where Jews and Gentiles alike come as the one new man.

And this in turn becomes the defining mission of the church throughout the age. Jesus said it in Matthew chapter 24: “this gospel of the kingdom… that we proclaim throughout the world as a testimony to all the nations.” Luke chapter 24: “repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed throughout the world.” Acts chapter one in verse eight: “you’ll be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

All of that to say that this day that the psalmist foresaw has come. Zion, the dwelling place of God, prospective of God’s global saving purpose, and all that Zion symbolized has now come to pass. The church is God’s temple. The church now is God’s dwelling place. And Gentiles the world over can say, as it were, “I was born in Zion.” Men and women the world over now can say, “we’ve come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly city.” All that to say, what Zion symbolized is now fulfilled in the New Testament church.

And yet—and you’ve heard me say this a hundred times—and yet, it’s not yet. Fulfilled in the church, and yet there’s more to come. This greater Zion is still to come and one day it’ll be realized in its fullness. Psalm 87 in verse 4: “Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon and Philistia, Tyre and Cush. This one was born there, they say.” That is simply, in other words, of what Isaiah and Habakkuk say when they prophesy: “the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.”

Carrying it further, Revelation chapter 3 and verse 12: the Lord Jesus writes to the church and says, “To the one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it. 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 in my own name.”

Then Revelation 7 verses 9 and 10: it’s not just the redeemed of Israel, but “a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb.'”

And then in Revelation 21 in verse 1—this is the time after the return of Christ, we’re entering now into the eternal state—we read: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more, and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.'”

And then finally, Revelation 21 verse 22: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb, and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of the Lord gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there’ll be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

Finally it has come to pass, men and women the world over, dwelling in the immediate presence of the Lord God.

All My Springs Are In You

But all of that then explains verse 7—why this city is marked by joy. There are singers and dancers there, residents of the New Jerusalem gleeful for the privilege of their citizenship in Zion. And their song, verse 7: “Singers and dancers alike say, all my springs are in you.” Well, that’s a poetic way of saying, “All I need is in Zion. All I want is in Zion. I don’t need anything else. I love it here. And everything I could ever want or ever need, I find here in Zion.”

This imagery is picked up elsewhere in the scriptures in Ezekiel chapter 47. We find the waters that issue from the temple, the threshold of the temple, waters coming out from this visionary temple, flow out from the temple to revive the desert. Jesus picks up on imagery related to this in John chapter 7 with regard to the deep, abiding, joyful presence of the Spirit of God, where he says, “he that believes on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” And of course we find it in Revelation 21 and 22, where the new city, the heavenly city coming down from heaven, a river runs through it. And it brings life to the trees which bear their fruit every month, to the healing of the nations.

All of this is what the psalmist foresees and has in mind when he writes in verse 3, “Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.” With prophetic insight, he sees the abounding blessedness of God’s presence gone global. No longer is there need of a given mountain, a given locality, but men and women the world over belong to God through the saving work of Jesus Christ. And finally, in the end, all of the redeemed gather together around the king and sing his praise and boast that they live in Zion. Psalm 87 pictures that: a congregation of God’s people everywhere gathered around the king and basking in the recognition that they were born in Zion.

While we’ve seen it many times, we see it over and again in the Psalter: the dominating theme of the Psalms is the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. Whether the focus is on the destruction of God’s enemies or the vindication of his people, that theme comes over again and again throughout the Psalter. The glory days of David and the glory days of Solomon may be behind us. And in fact, here in book three of the Psalter, it’s marked by this foreboding sense that something has gone awry with God’s reign.

Book three of the Psalter begins with Psalm 73 that we saw last week. It’s not a lament, but it’s Asaph’s confusion because things don’t seem right. The bad guys are getting ahead and the good guys are losing. Next time we’ll see Psalm 88, which is known as the dark psalm of the Psalter—a unique kind of lament in some ways that we’ll see. And then book three concludes with Psalm 89, which is just a dreadful lament where the psalmist deplores this idea that it seems—it seems—that God has simply abandoned his promise to David.

But in an unshaken kind of faith, and reflecting the faith of the editors who brought the Psalms together in the order that we have them, to remind us and assure us of God’s promise, they put Psalm 2 right up at the front door, where it tells us that God will establish his kingdom in the earth through his appointed king, and that kingdom will be massive. It will be global in extent. That kingdom is making its advance today through the gospel. Men and women the world over are being rescued out of the rule of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. They all can boast, “I was born in Zion.”

In this inaugurated phase of the kingdom, God’s kingdom people are in the minority. But one day, the psalmist foresees—and one day, use Paul’s language in Romans 11, citing Isaiah chapter 59—the Redeemer will come to Zion. He’ll usher in God’s kingdom in its fullness. It’ll be a kingdom characterized by righteousness and peace, and men and women the world over will boast, “I was born in Zion. I belong to the king.” And I suspect in that day when we sing verse two, “the Lord loves the gates of Zion,” I suspect we might add a few words: “The Lord loves the gates of Zion, and so do we.” Everything I could ever want, everything I could ever need is here.

And that’s why John Newton in his famous hymn picks this up:

The Savior, if of Zion’s city
I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride and pity,
I will glory in your name.

The world looks with condescending disdain on the church: “You poor benighted people.” And we look back and we shake our heads and say, “You’ve got nothing. You’ve got nothing over me. I was born in Zion, a citizen of the city of the king with all of the rights and privileges of it.”

In a moment, we will sing that song. In fact, why don’t you look at it now: Trinity Hymn No. 269. Let’s walk through it quickly before we sing it. John Newton here, the famous author of “Amazing Grace,” writes this hymn, and he’s captured the psalm, Psalm 87, very well.

Stanza one captures for us verse 3. That’s right out of verse 3 of Psalm 87. Stanza one is an allusion to verse 7. And then verse 2: “See the streams of living waters springing from eternal love.” That’s verse 7: “All our springs are in you.” “Well supply thy sons and daughters and all fear of want remove. Who can faint while such a river ever flows their thirst to assuage?”

Verse three builds on the imagery but with a broader Old Testament context: “Round each habitation hovering”—I suspect what Newton has in mind there is each local congregation of believers—”Round each habitation hovering, see the cloud and fire appear for a glory and a covering showing that the Lord is near.”

Actually, the fourth stanza in the original is not in the Trinity Hymnal. Newton fills this in with wonderful gospel truth: “Blessed inhabitants of Zion, washed in the Redeemer’s blood, Jesus, whom their souls rely on, makes them kings and priests to God.”

The last stanza then pulls together the thoughts of verses four to seven and really captures the spirit of the entire psalm:

Savior, if of Zion’s city
I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride or pity,
I will glory in thy name.
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
all its boasted pomp and show.
Solid joys and lasting treasure,
none but those born in Zion know.

Let’s stand together as we sing. Ian, would you lead us?