We will read in that place in the Word of God upon which the hymn we have just sung is founded. That is in the eighty-seventh Psalm: Psalm 87.
His foundation is in the holy mountains.
The Lord loveth the gates of Zion
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of thee,
O city of God. Selah.I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them that know Me:
Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia:
This one was born there.Yea, of Zion it shall be said,
This one and that one was born in her;
And the Most High Himself will establish her.
The Lord will count, when He writeth up the peoples,
This one was born there. Selah.They that sing as well as they that dance shall say,
All my fountains are in thee.
And in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 12: “Ye are come unto Mount Zion.”
It is always a most happy and helpful thing to have a suitable setting for a meeting. This evening, we might speak about the blessings of the Christian life and tell those who do not know, and are not in the enjoyment of them, what a good thing it is to belong to the Lord.
It might resolve itself into saying a lot of things, arguing those things out, or trying to persuade. But it would be hard if there were not some setting for all that. I think the best argument and the best statement of that fact is found in the very atmosphere of this gathering.
I was just thinking, while you were singing, that if I had been an unsaved person, did not know the Lord, and was not really in the enjoyment of these things, and had come in while that singing was going on, I should have been compelled, if I had been honest, to say, “These people are having a good time. They have got something.”
And that really is the best preaching, is it not? So I say to you that whatever I may say is borne out and given point by the situation in which we are found this evening. If you cannot accept the argument—if the argument of words does not go down with you—then just look at the people, listen to the people. If you are not convinced that the people of God have got something worth having, you are very thick-skinned indeed.
Well, that is the little introduction: right time, setting, and introduction, or meditation. This eighty-seventh Psalm, with its present application, is just that.
All that is said there about Zion and the citizens of Zion is brought into the New Testament in the statement, “Ye are come unto Zion.” That is not something in the Old Testament, long ago and far away. There is something here for you now. It is present for you to know and to possess. We are come unto Zion.
Now let us look at this eighty-seventh Psalm and draw from it some of those things which are brought to us in the Lord Jesus at this very present time.
His foundation is in the holy mountains.
The Lord loveth the gates of Zion
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of thee,
O city of God.
That is the first contrast. It is represented by two terms on either side: Jacob on the one side, contrasted with Zion on the other; the tents of Jacob on the one side, the gates of Zion on the other. It is a double contrast.
The statement is that the Lord very much prefers the one to the other. Indeed, it is put in strong language: “The Lord loveth” the one more than the other. Of course, our inquiry is: What is the foundation, the basis, of this discrimination and partiality? What is it that the Lord loves so much more?
It is not a statement that the Lord does not love Jacob—no, the tents of Jacob. He does; but He loves Zion, the gates of Zion, very much more.
Jacob represents the sovereign mercy of God. Wherever we come upon Jacob, whether it be the man himself or all the people going by his name, that which his name represents, we invariably find ourselves in the presence of that which calls for and demands the mercy of God.
The very name Jacob—the supplanter—is that for which, apart from the mercy of God, there is no hope and no case. Yet how very much of divine mercy is exhibited in relation to Jacob.
How often in the prophets—and that is significant, because in the prophets Israel had sunk into the Jacob realm again, from Israel, the prince with God, into the place of the old nature governed by fleshly interests—the name in the prophets for Israel is so often that of Jacob. Yet how much there is in the prophets of God’s great mercy to Jacob: “He will have mercy upon Jacob.”
That is wonderful. It is just wonderful when you think what all that name means, to see how God went out to Jacob: the patience of God, the long-suffering and forbearance of God, God never giving up. Jacob was hard work, yes; Jacob always symbolizes that which draws out the mercy of God.
Well, the Lord loved Jacob, and so Jacob speaks of great mercy in terms of patience, long-suffering, forbearance, and longing love. Yes, He did. But do you think that is all that the Lord wants? That which just demands His mercy, mercy, mercy all the time; that with which He has got to be patient and long-suffering?
Do you think that is wholly according to the Lord’s heart? Surely not. What is it that the Lord looks for, longs for, and delights in more than that?
Thank God that He is a God of mercy. He is merciful to us in our Jacob state. But do not let us conclude that because God is so gracious to us, as sinners, in all that we are in our human weakness, frailty, and failure—however great His mercy is—that that is the thing which fully satisfies Him: just to have us as objects of His mercy.
And so He contrasts Jacob, the tents, and Zion. Zion represents something more than the mercy of God; it represents the full response to the mercy of God.
When you come into that which is represented by Zion, then you find that which answers back to the mercy of God—something which says, “His mercy has not been in vain.” If you like to change the word from mercy to grace, you can: the grace of God has not been in vain.
It is not that God has just had to go on being merciful, merciful, merciful, and that is the end of it. No: His grace has begotten something. His grace has produced something. His grace has drawn out something.
Zion is represented always as the place of praise. It was there in Zion that the sons of Korah carried on the singing. Zion is a place of song. If our singing and praise are genuine, they are an expression of appreciation of the grace of God.
That is the true note in Christianity, is it not? Christianity is the only real singing religion in the world. There may be dirges in other religions, and awful noises, but singing, praising, rejoicing—you do not find it in any other religion. Only in Christianity. It is made up so largely of hymns, is it not? So many of our hymns are just the answer of the heart to the grace of God.
“God inhabiteth the praises of Israel.” So Zion represents something more than mercy. It represents that which comes back to God because of His grace. It means that all that the Lord Jesus has done has taken effect and is really producing something in us.
“The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” The Lord loves Zion. While He loves Jacob, He loves Zion infinitely more. He loves the people who have so apprehended His mercy and His grace that they have nothing now for which to live but to give back to the Lord that which is an answer to His grace.
The tents of Jacob and the gates of Zion provide another aspect of the contrast. It is only following up what I have just said, because these couplets go together; they belong to one another. Dwellings, or tents, are contrasted with the gates of Zion.
There are two distinct pictures here, if only we recognize it. It is a transition; it is a change of position and time altogether. When you contemplate the tents of Jacob, you are contemplating them in the wilderness.
In the Old Testament, Jacob is in tents in the wilderness. Then the people are in Zion; they are no longer in the wilderness, they are in the city. It is a different position, a different time altogether, a different dispensation. They have passed out of the wilderness, out into the land; they have reached the city. Zion is realized. They had been looking toward Zion through the wilderness; now they have arrived.
Tents and gates—but what does that mean? In the wilderness, in their tents, they were learning by discipline and by experience to know the Lord, gaining spiritual history.
The wilderness was a time of spiritual education under the hand of God. What hard lessons they had to learn; what bitter blows they suffered. Yes, it was a time of testing, a trial. It was forty years, which always implies probation: a time of testing, to find out, to prove, and to bring to some position along that line.
That is the implication of the tents of Jacob: all that they were going through in order to learn in the school of the wilderness.
But what is happening in the gates of the city? There the elders gather together: mature people, in counsel, possessing the knowledge gained through experience, which is being turned to account for the people of God.
The gates are the places of counsel in the Bible—a conference of the people who know. The judges sit in the gates. People of spiritual intelligence are there conferring together and making decisions in the interests of the people of God. They are people who have learned and have brought the good of their learning, education, and training into practical application for the nation.
Do you see the point? Yes, the Lord loved them in their tents in the wilderness; there is no doubt about that. But what patience and forbearance through the forty years! Here, in the gates of the city, all the good of their discipline, training, and education is gathered and turned to account for the good of others.
The Lord does not want us all our lifetime to be in the wilderness—learning, learning, learning; being tested, being tried, being brought to understanding. He looks forward to the time when you and I will be in a position to turn what He has taught us to account for others. That is a greater pleasure to Him.
Now, are you in the wilderness or in the gate? Are you still out there wandering about, learning slowly through discipline and adversity? Or are you a responsible person in the gate?
Those who know their Bibles have the advantage over those who do not in this matter of gates and councils in the gate. In the Bible, the city councils took place there to decide matters and judge matters for the good of the people. The Lord wants people like that.
That is what the apostle was speaking about to the Corinthians. He had to say to them, “I hear that there are difficulties between yourselves, and you are taking your matters to the law courts of this world. You are going before the unjust to judge your matters.” That is a mark of immaturity, a sign that you have not got very far on the way.
You ought to be able to judge one another and judge your own affairs. If you would judge yourselves, you would not be judged of the Lord. You ought to be in a position to decide these matters and not take them to worldly wisdom.
What the Lord loves is that kind of maturity which means that, from the way in which the Lord has taught and disciplined us, we know what we ought to do and are able to help others. That is the difference between the tents and the gates.
Yes, He will be very patient with you while you are in the wilderness, but do not think that He wants that to be the beginning and the end of everything. He looks for the day—and it will be the day of His greater joy—when you and I will be in the gates of Zion. “The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the tents of Jacob.”
Then the psalmist goes on to another set of contrasts:
I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them that know Me:
Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia:
This one was born there.
Not each one alone, but the whole lot put together, is set over against Zion. You can bring all the greatest names of this world together, put them all together, and there is one name that is more than all together: Zion, the city of God.
We need not stay to speak at length of these various things. We know what Egypt stands for: the power of this world. Babylon: the pride of this world. Philistia: the presumption of this world. Tyre: the commercial glory of this world. Ethiopia: the darkness of the human heart in this world.
Over against all that, the psalmist is saying that there are people who are thirsty to say that they were born in Egypt, that they belong to Egypt. Others boast that Babylon was their native country and city: “Oh, wonderful Babylon! I was born in Babylon.” Another says that he was born in Philistia; another in Tyre.
Read Ezekiel 27, and you will see what men boasted in concerning Tyre. Tyre was lifted up to the very heavens, exalted for the glory of its commerce. Read it all, with all its vaunting and boasting: “That is your heritage.”
These things are not small. Moses “accounted the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt” in Hebrews 11:26. That does not mean that the treasures of Egypt were nothing; it puts the reproach of Christ on a much higher level, because the treasures of Egypt were undoubtedly very great.
If you know anything about the glories of Egypt in its great days, you know that it was no small thing. Nor were the other nations insignificant. But when you have given them their due and said all that can rightly be said about their glory and position, something overtops them all.
Yea, of Zion it shall be said,
This one and that one was born in her.
The citizens of Zion have weighed up Egypt. Moses was a true spiritual citizen of Zion, although he never literally came to Zion. In spirit, he was a true citizen of Zion. He weighed up Egypt.
For forty years he took the measure of Egypt. By deliberate calculation, he counted it better to be in the reproaches of Christ than to have all that Egypt could offer. Notice: not the final glories of Christ, but the reproach of Christ.
The lowest level of union with Christ is better than the highest level of union with this world. That is not exaggeration. If words mean anything, that is what they mean. Better to be with Christ in His sufferings than to have all that this world has to offer outside of Christ.
That is the Christian’s testimony. That really is what it means when you have rightly understood that what Christ has done and offered is more than all.
After all, the simple Christian who knows his or her Lord truly looks pityingly upon these great people of the world. “You have got all that, but I am sorry. You think you are having a good time with all that, but I really pity you. You do not know anything about what lasts.”
The citizen of Zion has weighed up Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia, and written across them all: “There is a bad bargain if you lose Christ.”
Paul was like that. He looked at all his natural heritage, his birth, his standing: “A Hebrew of Hebrews; of the tribe of Benjamin; as touching the law, a Pharisee.” He made everything of that once. It was his life, his glory, his ambition, his chief interest.
Then he found Christ. He looked at all those things and said, “I count them as refuse, compared with Christ.” But you never do that until you have something with which to compare them. This is a comparative matter. It is something very wonderful for those who have Christ.
If you have Christ, if you are citizens of Zion, then all the rest is poor stuff after all—poor fare, however much there is of it.
Between these contrasts, the psalmist says, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O Zion, city of God.” Glorious things are spoken of thee.
What would you consider to be the most glorious thing that could be true of your life? If something could be said to sum up your life at the end, as really, truly expressing the value of your life, what would it be?
I do not know exactly the best way in which to put it, but I think it would be something like this: to have brought satisfaction to the heart of God. If only my life could mean that God’s good pleasure rested upon it, that God could say, “Well done. Well done.”
Well then, dear people, I would want nothing more than that. Nothing more than that. Would you have anything more than that? What could you ask for? That which gives God satisfaction is the most glorious thing that can ever be said about anything.
It is only bearing out all that we have been saying through this meditation: what Zion means to God, answering back to Him for His pleasure. He takes delight in Zion, in her stones and in her walls. Zion is precious to Himself.
Here is the Lord Jesus, Who has found the full, final, utter pleasure of His Father’s heart. Because of His life and because of His work, the Father says:
This is My beloved Son,
In Whom I am well pleased.
If God could say that to you and to me, what should we feel like? We would surely sing with joy. And He “hath made us accepted in the beloved” in Ephesians 1:6. Ye are come unto Zion.
We are accepted in the One Who has the perfect approval of God. How difficult it is for us to believe that and to accept that with Him! Yet it is a refuge to which we must constantly flee when harassed and pursued by the accuser, who would remind us of ourselves, our sinfulness, and our failures, and constantly belabour us with the sense of an evil conscience.
Our refuge is to enter into Christ and say, “In Him, God covers all.”
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
Take the very weapon out of the hand of the enemy and use it against him: justification by faith, acceptance in the Beloved. The Word speaks repeatedly of us as “beloved of God”—and that to such miserable creatures as you and I.
Glorious things, glorious things, are spoken of Zion. Zion, as we have said, is not just a place and a set of things; it is a people. It is a people in union with God’s Son.
What is the prospect of Zion, the prospect of that people? Contemplate the things that are said about the church in the ages to come. The church in the ages to come—what a place, what a vocation!
Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
Unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.
The church is the New Testament equivalent of Zion. “Glorious things are spoken of thee.” We cannot dwell upon the glory that God has prepared and given, and unto which He has called His church for the ages to come. Glorious things!
My dear friend, if you are outside of Christ, you are missing something. You are missing something indeed; you are missing everything. Whatever you are gaining now, you will lose it all and have nothing left. But glorious things are spoken of Zion, the people of God.
Whatever we do not have here, we have got something that is more than all.
The Lord will count, when He writeth up the peoples,
This one was born there.
That raises the question for me: Have you been born in Zion? Have you been born again from above? Have you been born anew by the Spirit of God? Have you got another place where your name is enrolled—in the Lamb’s book of life? Are you registered in heaven?
Can you present your certificate of new birth? Have you got the credentials of this heavenly country in your heart and in your life? What are they?
With absolute assurance, you know that you have something. You know that you have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. You are not in conflict with heaven; you are on happy terms with heaven. You have peace. These are the credentials of new birth, and there are many other things.
Do you know anything about this? You know what I am talking about. Most of you do, I know, but it may be that somebody does not.
Let me say to you that if the Lord Jesus, when He was in this world, said to any man, “Ye must be born again,” He meant that you can be born again. If you must, you can. And you can be. I know it.
“The Lord will count, when He writeth up the peoples, This one was born there.” Selah. Think of that. Think of that.
They that sing as well as they that dance shall say,
All my fountains are in thee.
The citizens of Zion have resources upon which to draw of which others know nothing. They have invisible means of support.
People talk about having no visible means of support. Well, that is all right. It is a glorious position to be in if you are a citizen of Zion. There is no difficulty about being supported; there are plenty of invisible means of supply, and they are no less real for that.
The Lord Jesus lived on that basis. In the wilderness, Satan came and said, “Command that these stones become bread.” But the Lord had resources of which Satan knew nothing.
The disciples came to Him at the well and said, “Master, eat.” He said, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” Yes, spiritual resources. Those resources are for the citizens of Zion.
“All my fountains are in thee.” We do know something about this: drawing upon the Lord for our life, our subsistence, and more than that. Drawing upon such abundance that we are not just going about in a half-starved condition. We have enough.
It does not matter how many people come; we have something to give. That is a good thing—to be in that position. A hundred people: let them come, let them queue up, if you have something to give.
Yes, all the time, that is the testimony of a citizen of Zion, is it not? We lack nothing. We have plenty, always a margin for others. We have an affluence. We are wealthy people.
“All my fountains are in thee.” This is testimony. This is what is offered, you see—how it should be. We are come unto Zion. All this is presented to faith.
May the Lord give us a new heart to lay hold of this heritage of the children of Zion. Amen.