Psalm 87 – Psalms In The Summer

It's a psalm of the sons of Korah, a song.

Says, On the holy mount stands the city he founded.

The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than the dwelling places of Jacob.

Glorious things 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.

The Lord records as he registers the people that this one was born there.

Selah.

Singers and dancers alike say, All my springs are in you.

So reads God's word.

Alright, we're gonna go to the Lord's Prayer here.

Yeah, let's do this together here, guys.

We're gonna say it together.

This is something we get to do.

It's like singing, but without the without the uh music behind it here.

We're gonna say it together.

It's just a way that we can cry out in one voice to the Lord in the way that the Lord Jesus uh instructed.

So let's sing it together.

Or let's say it together here.

Ready?

It starts with our Father.

Ready?

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.

Amen.

That city that you are building, that city made without hands, uh, would you thrill our hearts afresh for what you are doing, what you are doing in our midst and what you're doing all across the world.

Be with us now as we come to your word.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please take a seat, everybody.

And if you have a Bible, do turn up Sam 87.

You can look it up on your phone if you uh if you have one.

Well, you definitely have one of those.

Uh just Google search Sam87ESV or use the app that you've got downloaded and so that you can follow along with us.

We do the SAMS in the summertime while people are on holiday vacation.

And uh we started years ago in SAM 1, and here we are in SAM 87.

Not quite sure what we're gonna do when we get to SAM 119, but we'll work that out when we get there.

Um I uh I don't know about you, uh, but we've all I think had the feeling of how disorientating it can be to uh live in a new city.

Maybe you've moved to Dublin and this is the disorientatingly new city, or you're from Dublin and you've lived for a while somewhere else.

I used to live uh in London, which is a much bigger, much faster uh city than somewhere like Dublin.

And those first few months can be quite challenging, can't they?

While you try and establish new rhythms and routines, new relationships, make some connections, particularly if you've left a whole bunch of really meaningful connections.

You can kind of feel a little bit adrift.

I remember when I uh moved uh from London to Dublin back in 2012.

I moved from a house that had six other guys in it.

Um, we were all in theological college together, we were all single, and so the house that we lived in was nicknamed the monastery.

Uh, so we were all the single theology geeks.

Um and so we were all called the monastery boys.

And I lived in this house that was huge and always full of noise and life and people coming over, usually because I was the one to host the parties, isn't that right, Philippa?

Um, and that's where that's where we met.

Uh our first meeting was at a fancy dress party that would that I had come up with a theme.

It was either pirates or farmers.

Do you get it?

So it was either a har or oo are.

Uh no, okay, moving on.

But I moved from this house of life and laughter and noise and vibrancy to Dublin where we weren't married yet, and I was living on my own.

It was quiet, it was really strange.

For the first few months at nighttime, I had to have the radio on all the time.

Uh back Dublin Talk Radio about 10 or 12 years ago was a huge thing in the evening from 10 o'clock to midnight on FM 104.

There was a phone-in show that just kind of went viral.

And I used to listen to that because I needed the noise.

And then I needed connection.

So, how do I get connected to people?

Well, I like to cook and so host lots of dinner parties trying to get to know people, but it's exhausting and it takes time to feel like you have a sense of place in a city again.

Lots of people relocate to Dublin because they're professionals or students, come for work or for a degree, and you have an opportunity to kind of remake yourself.

Who are you going to be in a city like Dublin or London or New York?

But underneath all of that, there's this common ache.

This desire for belonging, for connection, for a sense of place.

We ask ourselves, well, who who really knows me?

Who really cares?

Where am I from in any meaningful sense?

And Psalm 87 speaks directly to all of that longing for belonging that human beings have.

It lifts our eyes to something bigger than personal success or cultural background.

It sings of a city, Zion, not built by hands, but founded by God Himself.

A place where people from every tribe and tongue and language and nation come together.

And they say, I was born there.

That's where my home is.

Interestingly, we looked last week at Psalm 86.

And Psalm 86 is a Psalm written by David, which is kind of unusual because the Psalms are split up into five different books, and this is book three that we're currently in.

And in book three, there's only one Davidic Psalm, which is kind of odd.

And I kind of blew on past it until I read Psalm 87 this week.

Because in Psalm 86, this Psalm written by the king, he says prophetically in Psalm 86, we looked at it last week, he says, all the nations will come to you, O Lord.

And then what follows it?

Psalm 87.

It's as though the king pops back up and proclaims this prophecy, and then Psalm 87 shows us, in a sense, what his reign, his kingdom looks like in the future.

Isn't that wonderful?

That's the connection between these two Psalms.

It gives us a glimpse, it pulls back the curtain on that beautiful reality.

But how does this picture become a reality?

Or rather, where does it become a reality?

The Psalm talks about the city of Zion.

This city of Zion, here in this Psalm, is not the earthly city, not the earthly Jerusalem located in the Middle East.

The New Testament makes it crystal clear that the Zion glimpsed by the Psalms and the Zion promised to us as Christians, as followers of Jesus, is a heavenly city that is being prepared for us.

John has this beautiful image in his revelation right at the very end, where he sees the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming from heaven and meeting us on earth, our new home that God has prepared for us.

Or Paul in Galatians 4 says that we are not citizens of the earthly Jerusalem, but rather we are citizens of the heavenly one.

Or Hebrews 12.

Hebrews 12 says that we have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the place where the firstborn reigns.

Psalm 87 wants to give us a foretaste of what Christians are journeying towards, the great future that God has in store for us.

Let me tell you why that's important, actually.

The reason why that's important is because many of us, and certainly many of our non-Christian friends, struggle to kind of have a vision for the future.

That's why suffering can be so destabilizing, because it's such an interruption to your life, and you kind of wonder well, what is my life about?

Where am I going?

That's such a profound question.

And we struggle today with so much immediacy where things are so instant, where we're encouraged to live in the moment.

It's hard to have a vision of the future.

But it's essential that we do.

That's why this is important.

And that's what God is giving us in Psalm 87.

The glorious eternal beauty of the city of God, the people of God, celebrating what Christ is building.

But it's better than that.

Because Psalm 87 isn't just though it is about us looking down the corridor of time and seeing what God is doing.

No, in Jesus, those future realities that are laid up for us have broken in, in some senses, into our present experience.

And so we experience something now of what it is to be the beautiful, diverse, gathered people of God.

How do we get to do that?

It's through the church.

And so the celebration of the city of God is a celebration of the people of God, and that is realized here this morning and in the church across the world.

Psalm 87 is a glorious celebration of what God is doing in the church.

Now, you may end up feeling that, well, the the church is the church is broken, the church is weak, and the churches hurt people, and all of those things are true.

But behind it all, we mustn't lose sight of what God is doing.

The Psalm is a glorious celebration of the community that God Himself is building.

And its weakness won't have the final word.

Its marginalization won't have the final word.

The sinful people who hurt others in it won't have the final word.

It's a community that God Himself is drawing together.

And so this Psalm invites us all, all of us who long for connection and community and for a sense of belonging to find all of it in the soul satisfying community of his people.

It is a city founded on his love, made beautiful by our unity and full of joy.

That's where we're going.

Did you get it?

There's three points.

Founded on his love, made beautiful by his unity and full of joy.

The city of God, the people of God, the church, is founded by his love.

Have a look with me at uh verses one to three.

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.

The Psalm immediately draws us into what it's about.

There's a city, a place of security, a place of life, a place of love and vibrancy, and it's not founded by men.

Who's it founded by?

By God.

And what makes this city, this holy mountain, holy and precious?

Well, because God is holy and he has chosen to find it and to set his love upon it.

What's more, not only has he chosen it, he loves it.

It says the Lord loves the gates of Zion.

It's not just that God has a particular fascination for doors.

The gates is a uh is shorthand for the whole thing.

The gates were uh the the place of uh of of business and of justice, and uh they stand as a as a metaphor for the whole life of the city.

God loves it.

God loves the city that he has founded, God loves his people.

The word used for love here is a covenant love, or is the uh as the Jesus Storybook Bible talks about, uh a forever and unbreaking, sorry, uh an unbreaking, unchangeable, always and forever love.

It can never be taken away, it can never be diminished.

What sort of love does God have for you?

What does sort of love does God have for his people who are in Christ, who have trusted in him?

It's that sort of love.

An unwavering, undiminished, always and forever love.

That is what gives this city, that is what gives its people its permanence, its strength against all foes.

It is established by the love of God.

People think that the church was a a man-made exercise.

That the church was a corruption of what Jesus intended in order to try and manipulate people, in order to try and control people.

And certainly people have used the church to those sorts of ends, but the church, Big C church, is not a man-made organization.

It's a God-made organization.

What is the only organization, organism, entity that will continue on into eternity?

It's not it's not meta, it's not Tesla, it's not NVIDIA, it's not whatever else.

It's the church.

Why?

Because God has established it.

God has founded it, it exists because of him, and it continues because of his love.

Christ loves his church.

The church is established by his self-sacrificial love for her, the fact that he laid down his life for his people.

As he says in John 10, when he calls himself the good shepherd, what does he say?

He says, I lay my life down for my sheep.

Or Paul in Ephesians, when talking to husbands, he says, Husbands, love your wives.

How?

As Christ loved the church and did what?

And gave himself up for her.

He continues to love his people.

If you are a believer in Jesus this morning, if you are part of his people, Christ himself loves you.

You are his.

Holy, precious in his sight.

If Christ loves the church, so should Christ's people.

It is a strange thing for a believer to say something like I love Jesus.

I just don't really love the church.

That's a little bit like saying, I love Jesus, but I don't love what Jesus loved.

It's kind of odd.

Now, of course, we can all have struggles with the church.

Of course, this side of heaven, the church is not entirely holy and blameless.

And yet, it would be wrong in the light of Psalm 87 to lose sight of the glorious thing that God's gathered people is.

To lose sight of what God is doing, to lose sight of the love that He has for her, for us, despite our own failures.

To love Jesus is to love what He loved.

Yes, the church may seem weak and troubled, still, we are encouraged in this sound to look beyond the physical and see the glory of what God is building.

The truth remains that we are to love the people of God because Christ loves his people.

That love expresses itself in a myriad of different ways in how we serve one another, in how we shepherd and encourage one another, and how we rejoice with those who rejoice, and how we weep with those who weep, and how we give to support the ministry of the church, how we empower others to carry out the church's mission.

How will you be moved to love Christ's people?

What does that look like for you?

Do you love what Jesus loved?

Well, how will that express itself?

What's your um what's your favorite city?

Your favorite city to visit?

Another one that you live in, your favorite city to visit.

Mine's uh I struggled with this when I was writing it because I've got two in contention.

Uh I'm gonna tell you my runner-up and then I'll tell you the one that I that I went with anyway.

My runner-up's Prague.

Uh I think Prague is fantastic.

Uh, you come talk to me about Prague, and I'll tell you where you should go and get coffee, where you should go and get the best schnitzel, uh, good cocktail bar if you want if you want that sort of information.

Somebody told me.

Um Good, you're still awake.

Uh but here's my here's my five, right?

Ready?

It's Florence.

I love Florence.

Uh we had our honeymoon there.

We have a uh we have a painting of Florence uh upstairs in our house.

I could tell you uh what it is that you need to go and see in the Ufizi gallery.

I could tell you where you could go and get some good pizza, or about the uh the market with the uh the uh the wild boar fountain and how everybody comes and rubs its nose.

I could tell you how you shouldn't just look at the Ponto Vecchio.

That's the uh the bridge, the famous bridge that stretches over uh the river there in Florence.

Uh you should actually walk across the Ponto Vecchio to the other side of the city because just a few minutes' walk from the other side of the city is the Bobley Palace, which is the home of the Domedici.

And you should walk the gardens of uh the Bobley Palace because they lead you up onto a hill.

And as you stand on the crest of that hill, you get this panoramic vista of the Duomo, the great cathedral there, and the Palazzo.

Vecchio, this uh old square.

Uh it's a kind of a cube building with a big tower to tell you that you shouldn't get scammed by the guys who are trying to sell you tickets to the academy to go and see Michelangelo's David and how you can actually avoid some of the lines and get in.

I love Florence.

Where's your favorite city?

Come and tell me after the service about your favorite city, and let me tell you why I've just told you a bunch of stuff about Florence.

It's right there in verse 3.

Glorious things of you are spoken.

Oh city of God.

That's what we do.

When there's a city that captures our affections, that enthralls our imagination, we talk about it.

We go and tell people the best Aroncini balls can be found in this market.

And they're so cheap.

That's what we do.

And the city of Zion is no different.

The church is a city where people should come away with stories to tell, of a joyous welcome, a warm community of reverend worship, of that sense of your hearts burning as the scriptures are opened, as the disciples spoke about on the road to Emmaus.

To know this glory and to share it with others.

Those words, glorious things of you are spoken, have become in the history of the church the title of a hymn, Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, written by John Newton, the former slaver who wrote Amazing Grace.

Let me read to you one of the verses.

Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion's city of our God.

He whose word cannot be broken formed thee for his own abode.

On the rock of ages founded, what can shake thy sure repose with salvation's walls surrounded?

Thou mayst smile at all thy foes, an unshakable city, a glorious city, founded on Christ's love for his people.

Secondly, it is a city that is made beautiful by our unity.

Let me read, pick it up in verses four to six.

Among those who are known to 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.

Zion is glorious because it has drawn people from all over the world.

Who finds a home?

In Zion's courts.

Who finds a home?

All who know the Lord.

All who have come to him in faith and repentance.

None are excluded.

All are welcome.

All are invited, all are beckoned to find a home in the glorious city of Zion.

Who is the gospel for?

The good news of Jesus?

Who's it for?

All nations.

How do all nations, all peoples, come to Zion?

One way.

Through the knowledge of God revealed to us in Christ Jesus.

That He forgives sins, that He transforms hearts, that He makes people new, and He adopts them into His family forever.

How do we know that this Psalm has in mind that sort of forgiving, sin covering God?

Well, because we look at the places that the people have come from.

They're all the old enemies.

All the old hostile powers against the ancient people of God.

They are welcome.

They find a home in Zion.

Rahab, you might be thinking of uh the scarlet woman.

Now, Rahab in the Old Testament is a slightly kind of mocking way of talking about Egypt.

Egypt and Babylon.

Those two great powers, those two great enslavers of the people of God, opposed to him and to his people, they find a welcome.

They find a place of belonging.

This is only possible through a God who forgives.

This is only possible through Christ, who makes wicked people righteous.

But he doesn't just stop there.

He talks about Philistia.

That's the Philistine.

Remember David and Goliath?

Goliath was a Philistine.

The ancient people who harassed and mocked the people of God.

They find a home.

Tyre.

Tyre was Tyre was Vegas, right?

So it was kind of sin city, opulent, wealthy, tempted to seduce the people of God.

They find a home.

Kush.

Modern-day Ethiopia.

The very the very end of the maps.

The end of the known world that those from the farthest flung reaches.

It's like mayo for us.

Even they find a home.

All are drawn to Zion's beloved gates.

Who does the God of Zion welcome?

Those who were proud?

Those who were hostile to God and his ways.

Those who were rich and because of their riches believe that they had no need of him.

Those who look strong, those who look and appear to have it all together.

And yet in their hearts there is a disquiet.

There's a longing.

They don't like to admit it.

It pops up every now and again.

This longing that you don't quite know what to do with.

This gnawing, this restlessness, this unease.

You're welcome.

You're invited to the city of God.

You're invited to find a place of belonging behind Zion's walls.

The Lord invites in every one of us and delights to bring us together from different cultures, different ethnicities, different classes.

The church is made beautiful.

Zion is made beautiful because all of these diverse people come together and find a home in Zion.

But it gets better than that.

Did you notice the refrain just in these three short verses?

Every time in each of the verses, once in verse 4, once in verse 5, and again in verse 6, there's talk of birth.

This one was born here, they say.

And of Zion it shall be said, this one and that one were born in her.

Well, because I want to talk about where I was born.

I grew up in Northern Ireland, but I was born here.

I was born in the Republic.

But I grew up in Northern Ireland, and I got blessed or cursed, depending on your perspective, with this naughty accent.

And so I chew on all of the vowels.

And hopefully you can understand me.

But here, people are from another place.

They're from Rahab or Babylon, they're from Philistia or Tyre or Cush.

But they're also born in Zion.

That's odd, isn't it?

Zion is both a place and she's a mother.

She's a place of birth.

Or rather, of rebirth.

That is what Christians believe.

You have a place of physical birth.

Maybe it's in Ireland, like me.

In Louthe County Hospital in Dundalk.

Maybe it's in South Africa, Nigeria, America, Argentina, Chile, Mexico.

I could go on and on and on.

We have a place of physical birth, but through faith in Jesus, we are born again in Zion.

By the Spirit of God, by the power of God, transformed by Him and brought into His forever family, that is the church.

That's what God's doing.

And there's this beautiful image in verse 6.

The Lord records as he registers the people.

This one was born there.

Just imagine God, your heavenly father, who loves you, who has called you by name to place your faith in Jesus, to become part of his people, part of his family.

Imagine him there.

This one was born there.

He records it himself.

This is your home.

You belong here with me forever.

The church is beautiful because it is both a global and a supernatural phenomenon.

Global because it encompasses all who will come.

All who will come and bow the knee to King Jesus.

Jesus is number one.

So we sang about it.

But it is also supernatural because all who come are given new life in him, a new birth, a new place, born by the Spirit of God and adopted into the family of God, sanctified forever in his city.

And so John Newton writes again in that hymn.

Savior, if of Zion's city I through grace a member am, let the world deride or pity.

Fading is the worldly pleasure.

All this boasting, pomp and show, solid joys and lasting treasure, none but Zion members know.

What's John Newton saying in all that old language?

He's saying there's nothing more precious than being part of Zion by the grace of God.

That all of the all of the treasures, all of the promises, all of the shiny things of money, sex, power, comfort, career, that all of them pale into insignificance.

Solid joys and lasting treasures none but Zion's members know.

Do you know them?

Finally.

This is a city that is founded by the love of Christ, that is made beautiful by our unity from every tribe and tongue and nature and nation and language.

And it is a city that overflows with joy.

Last verse, verse seven.

Singers and dancers alike say, All my springs are in you.

What does that mean?

Let's look.

Cities have a culture.

Have you noticed that?

Different cities have a different vibe.

If I was asking, okay, let's let's have a little bit of audience participation.

Because I think we I think we can do this and get it right, right?

Okay, what is the vibe, the stereotypical cultural expectation of the following cities?

So shout out just one word descriptors, one word adjectives.

Okay, we're gonna go for it.

New York.

Busy.

Busy?

Yes.

Loud, right?

What are the people like?

Angry.

Angry! Yeah, never met more angry people in my life.

Right?

They're fast-paced, driven, tough.

I'm walking here, yeah, right?

Apparently you should never say that.

Um, but there we go.

Right.

Paris.

What's Paris like?

Obnoxious?

The French people are kind of snobbish, right?

Uh sorry to any French people that are here this morning.

Uh Paris.

Somebody up the back?

Smailing.

Sma so we're not talking about the people right now.

But it is, it's funny, like parts of Paris stink.

I'm I'm I'm gonna say I was gonna say romantic.

It's the city because I was gonna be more positive than you guys.

I this gonna quickly let it like turn into like Lord of the Flies, or just like, oh, Paris sucks.

Uh it's the city of lights, it's the city of skeptics, of love, romance, of whether?

Expensive.

Just Europe.

Uh what uh uh I had to Google this, maybe you can so what's what's Legos like?

Hustle.

Hustle?

Hustle! It's literally on here.

I was like, what is Lagos like?

It's like chat T BT.

What are some of the cultural stereotypes of Lagos?

And we were like, everybody hustles.

Yeah, hustle, hustle.

What what else?

Traffic.

Yeah, energetic.

Sorry?

Parties?

What are those?

Oh parties! Okay.

Parties, not parties.

I think it meant burgers.

Just wall-to-wall burger.

Can't move without a burger and letting us.

Who knew?

Right.

Here's a risky one.

Now you gotta be nice, okay?

Here.

Friendly.

Friendly?

Where?

Calm?

Dublin?

Depends where you go.

Don't go, don't go to O'Connell Street, kind of anytime.

Well, anytime really.

Um, rainy.

What about the what about the what about the people?

Mean to New Yorkers.

Friendly, mean I'm walking here.

Yeah.

Friendly, mean to New Yorkers.

We're the we're storytellers and musicians.

We're we're we're poets and we're drinkers.

And we have the as Leonard Cohen said, a visionary haze of alcohol.

Welcome to Dublin.

Isn't that it can be frustrating, it's broken in certain ways, but it's a resilient city that has a culture.

The culture of the city is fueled by what by what people love, by what people believe about life, uh, by what the people think life is all about and what matters, whether it's success like New York, or image like Paris, or family.

So, what's the culture of the city of Zion like?

What's the culture of the city of God like?

What's the culture of the church supposed to be like?

Holy.

Yeah, welcoming, holy.

Sorry.

That was a rhetorical question.

Uh, audience participation is nice closed.

You ruin them a rhythm.

Like, shout your amens, that's great, but shh.

It's a place of joy.

It's a place of joy.

Singers and dancers.

Singers and dancers.

A place of joy, a place of life.

I heard something a few weeks ago that really stuck with me.

Some of you who are kind of online, you kind of watch Christian apologists and things like that, might be familiar with a guy called Glenn Scrivener.

Glenn Scrivener was doing a talk that I was at, and he was talking about his church and the kind of disposition of the church and kind of their evangelistic.

How do they reach non-Christians?

And he had this one little line that's really stuck with me.

You know what he said?

He said, the church should be a place of joy to which non-Christians are invited.

Come and see the joy of Christians, of God's people.

And if you're not a Christian, if you're not a follower of Jesus, you want to leave a place like this going, wow, like they have a happiness, they have a they have a joy that I actually quite like.

I know I don't have that.

And that seems to sustain them through suffering.

How do they get that?

Where does that come from?

The culture of the city of Zion, the culture of the people of God, is one of joy and life and love.

Singers sing and dancers dance, and all declare, here is the living water that refreshes your soul.

All my springs are in ye.

This is how we know that this isn't this isn't earthly Jerusalem.

Because there isn't a river running out of earthly Jerusalem.

But when you read something like the book of Revelation, what does John talk about?

John talks about from the throne came a river that watered the whole city.

All my streams are in ye.

This is how we know we're glimpsing something spiritual.

The jubilant response, the only right response to what God has done is joy and delight.

He has established his church, the city of God.

He loves it.

Hear me.

He loves you.

He delights over you and wants to infuse your soul with joy.

A joy that lasts through every circumstance until you see at the end of your days coming over the horizon of your life.

That glorious heavenly city.

Your home forever.

He has made you a citizen of heaven.

He has recorded your name in his book.

Whether wherever you were born, if you trust in Jesus, you are born again in Zion.

And that identity leads us to delight.

That's the culture of this city.

Christ offers us living water, just as He offers it, offered it to the woman at the well, to quench and satisfy the longings, our longing for be longing.

And to fuel our joy.

Maybe you've been away from home, from God's people for a long time.

It's time to come home.

Maybe that joy seems distant.

Come home today and like a child, returning home, find that your room's ready for you.

And there's a place.

There's no no no recriminations, no where have you been?

Just welcome.

We've got food here.

We've got friends here.

We've got life here.

Have a seat.

John Newton again.

See the streams of living waters springing from eternal love.

Well supply thy blessed members, and all fear of want remove.

Who can faint when such a river ever flows their thirst to shuge?

Grace which, like the Lord the Giver, never fails from age to age.

What is he saying?

There is an eternal river that never runs dry, that never runs out, that will always quench your thirst.

His name is Jesus.

Come and drink deep by faith.

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