PSALM 87 - The Beloved Citadel

Introduction

On August 24th, 1572, thousands of French Huguenot Christians were dragged from their beds into the streets of Paris and murdered by rampaging mobs for their Protestant convictions. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, as it became known, sparked similar riots and attacks on Huguenot Christians for two months all over France. Contemporary accounts say that rioters in Paris chained off streets so that Protestants could not escape from their houses; afterwards the victims’ bodies were thrown into the Seine. City sanitation records from the period record that over the next week, city workmen were paid to retrieve and bury over one thousand bodies that had washed up on the banks of the Seine.

Fast forward four hundred fifty-two years to a couple of weeks ago, when the descendants of Huguenot and Catholic alike stood on a stage constructed over the Seine for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Over those same waters that had been clogged with the bodies of faithful martyrs whose blood cries out from under the altar of heaven today for justice, the nation of France displayed a blasphemous mockery of the Last Supper, turning the account of Christ’s institution of the New Covenant in His blood into a freakshow of drag queens and sodomites. Had the Olympic organizers attempted such a display in the Paris of the sixteenth century, Huguenot and Catholic alike would have forgotten their differences and united to utterly wipe out every trace of such blasphemous wickedness from their nation.

Watching that depraved and hideous spectacle during the opening ceremonies, it was hard not to wonder how a nation that could produce men like John Calvin, and a city that was so saturated with Christianity for so many centuries came to be so utterly devoid of Christian sentiment that it would so eagerly use an event watched by the whole world to reveal its deep and abiding hatred for the image of God that they bear and mockery of the New Covenant instituted by the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Has the Great Commission failed? Jesus said that He would go with His apostles “to the end of the age” to make disciples of the nations; and yet two thousand years later the nations are still raging against Him. What future does the Kingdom of God have in a world that would celebrate the blasphemies of the French Olympics?

The section of the Psalms we are studying this summer (Book III), were compiled to express the same kind of lament from God’s Old Testament people— “Have the Covenant promises failed? Has God’s promise of the Anointed One’s rule been defeated?” And so how does Psalm 87 fit into this movement of the psalter? It is evidently another “pilgrimage psalm” that faithful Jews would sing about the Temple in Jerusalem as they made their journey to appear before God as He commanded:

Psalm 87:1–3 (LSB)

His foundation is in the holy mountains. Yahweh loves the gates of Zion More than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. Selah.

This is a psalm that describes YHWH’s delight in His dwelling place and His people gathered there:

Psalm 87:4–6 (LSB)

“I shall mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know Me; Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia: ‘This one was born there.’” But of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in her”; And the Most High Himself will establish her. Yahweh will count when He registers the peoples, “This one was born there.” Selah.

We have noted before (and will continue to be reminded throughout this series) that one of the main purposes of the Psalms is to train our affections as believers—to show us how to “sing in the dark” of a hostile and crumbling world, to show us how to delight in God above all else, to set our hearts and minds on the sure and certain promises we have in the work of Jesus Christ in the New Covenant.

And so this psalm appears here in Book III so that we may learn to imitate our Father’s steadfast love for His people, that we do not lose sight of the glorious City of Zion of which we are citizens, but would pledge ourselves to delight in it as He does. So the way I want to frame the message of this psalm for us this morning is to say that

A Christian shares God’s GLAD and LOYAL LOVE for His CITADEL of SAINTS

Over against the spiteful hatred of a crumbling world in an age when God’s plan seems to have all but failed, Christian, you are to be a glad and loyal member of His company—your Heavenly Father loves the saints, and as His loyal son, as His faithful daughter, you love what He loves and delight in what He delights in. Just as Psalm 86 teaches us to delight in God’s lovingkindness more than we fear the hatred of the world, so Psalm 87 teaches us to love the City of God more than the world around us hates it.

Verse 1 begins with the image of God’s city as a high fortress in the mountains, safe from all enemies and far removed from all of the rebellious nations. Christian, see here in these verses that you are called to

I.Share His delight in His SANCTUARY (Psalm 87:1-3)

Psalm 87:1–2 (LSB)

His foundation is in the holy mountains. Yahweh loves the gates of Zion More than all the dwelling places of Jacob.

How does the text say that God delights in the sanctuary where His people gather? It says in verse 1 that

He has made it ETERNALLY SECURE (v. 1; cp. Ps. 125:1)

Psalm 125 begins with the same image:

Psalm 125:1 (LSB)

Those who trust in Yahweh Are as Mount Zion, which will not be shaken but will abide forever.

The physical mountain called Zion in Israel is close by to the Old City quarter of Jerusalem. The word itself is used 152 times in the Old Testament, with only a handful of those occurrences actually referring to the physical location. The vast majority are in the poetic and prophetic books (39 occurrences in the Psalms), and tend to look not at the physical location of the Temple in Jerusalem but as a metaphor or image of God’s dwelling with His people at the end of the age. To speak of “Zion” is to speak of “the faithful city of God’s saints.”

And the psalmist here in Psalm 87 writes that God has made that dwelling absolutely certain! Christian, as you walk through days when everything is crumbling around you, you can delight in the eternally secure dwelling that is promised to you by your Heavenly Father!

YHWH delights in the sanctuary of His people—he has made it eternally secure, and in verses 2-3 we see that

He loves the GATHERING of His PEOPLE (vv. 2-3)

Psalm 87:2–3 (LSB)

Yahweh loves the gates of Zion More than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. Selah.

If this is indeed a pilgrimage song that was sung by worshippers on their way to Jerusalem to appear before YHWH at the Temple, then this would be a song sung on their way to gather in His presence.

See here, Christian—God loves the gathering of His people! God delights in His people faithfully congregating in His presence to appear before Him in worship! The sense here is that God indeed loves the dwellings of His people; their own tents, their own homes are a delight to Him. But Verse 2 says that God loves the gates of Zion where His people gather. The Hebrew word rendered “loves” here has the sense of “a great affection or care or loyalty towards”--as much as He loves the godly households and faithful families of His people in their own places, God is especially pleased with the faithful gathered worship of His people!

To share God’s glad and loyal love for the citadel of His saints means to share in His delight for His sanctuary. And as the psalm progresses we see that we are also to

II. Share His delight in His CHOSEN ones (Psalm 87:4-6)

Look at verse 4:

Psalm 87:4 (LSB)

“I shall mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know Me; Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia: ‘This one was born there.’”

Now, take a look at the nations that are named here—the first name, “Rahab”, is not referring to the Rahab from the book of Joshua, the mother of Boaz. It is another name for Egypt, and is also the name of the mythical sea-monster that represents the violence and chaos of the world apart from God. But as you look down the list, you see that all of these nations are mortal enemies of Israel: Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia (Cush).

But this psalm says that they will be counted as born in Zion! The psalmist is magnifying God’s glory because

He turns His ENEMIES into His WORSHIPPERS (v. 4; cp. Acts 2:8-11)

What other God can do such a thing? Each of those nations had their own gods—Ra and Anu and Dagon and Melqart and Bastet—and none of their gods would be able hold on to their people! YHWH not only establishes His own people in Zion but He takes the other gods’ peoples away from them!

This is one of the reasons that we understand the name “Zion” to point ahead to a future reality when it is used in the Old Testament—at the time this psalm was written, these nations were mortal enemies of Jerusalem; there were no Babylonians or Egyptians or Philistines living as “natural-born” citizens of Jerusalem.

But the day did come when all of those nations heard the call of YHWH to become His worshippers—on the Day of Pentecost, they heard the Gospel in their own language:

Acts 2:8–11 (LSB)

“And how is it that we each hear them in our own language in which we were born? “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the district of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”

What prideful, blasphemous idolater can stand when YHWH calls him? What wicked, God-hating, self-loathing sinner can refuse God’s effectual call to repent and embrace the forgiveness and rebirth provided by the death, burial and resurrection of Christ? He is the God that turns His enemies into His worshippers, and

He takes PRIDE in His PEOPLE (vv. 5-6)

Look at verses 5-6:

Psalm 87:5–6 (LSB)

But of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in her”; And the Most High Himself will establish her. Yahweh will count when He registers the peoples, “This one was born there.” Selah.

The expression “this one and that one were born in her” literally reads “a man and a man are born in her”; it seems to be a way of indicating remarkable men born in Zion—kind of like when you see the plaque up in Hollywood on 219 between Penfield and Force that marks the birthplace of hymnwriter Philip Paul Bliss, or up in Driftwood the marker for where Tom Mix was born. A city or town receives recognition because of the notable figures born in them—and here in this psalm we see that Zion is recognizes as being the “birthplace” of many notable men. As one preacher put it:

The Israel of God has produced some of the most amazing warriors, inventors, workers, heroes, scholars, and adventurers who have ever lived. From David to Augustine, from Livingstone to Cranmer, and from Edwards to Newton, the kingdom of God is the place of which we may say, “This one was born in her. (Wilson, https://dougwils.com/the-church/s8-expository/psalm-87glorious-things-thee-spoken.html, retrieved 07/31/2024)

But notice that the ones “born in Zion” are not notable because of their accomplishments; they are not, in the end, even notable for their being born in the City of God—they are notable because God takes note of them:

Psalm 87:6 (LSB)

Yahweh will count when He registers the peoples, “This one was born there.” Selah.

Depend upon it, Christian, that when we all awaken on the Last Day and stand before Christ at His judgment seat, we will see all of the great heroes of the faith receive their reward: Paul, Timothy, Athanasius, Gregory, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Sproul, MacArthur. But somehow I expect that the names that receive the greatest glory and fame and adulation from God on that day will be people that you and I have never heard of—some faithful missionary, pastor, evangelist, or church member that toiled faithfully away in utter insignificance and anonymity, unknown to any but their own family and church, but who will be lifted up by God Himself on that day as one of the most renowned and celebrated and honored believers ever to live—because they were famous in His sight!

Oh, how God delights in His chosen ones! He delights to turn His enemies into His worshippers in His work of regeneration, and He takes great pleasure in His children—not because of what they have done, but because of what He has done in them and through them!

Christian, you are called to share God’s glad and loyal love for the citadel of His saints—share His delight in the sanctuary of His saints; share His delight in His chosen ones. The last verse of the psalm summarizes the song with the response of the citizens of God’s city to His delight in them—

III. God’s children DELIGHT in Him (Psalm 87:7)

Psalm 87:7 (LSB)

And singers, just like the dancers, will all say, “All my springs are in you.”

Here is another kind of cryptic saying in this psalm. Once again, the picture is of the faithful city of the saints—faithful members of the Covenant who are obedient to God and in right relationship with Him. In other places in the Old Testament, the dancers and singers are warned that their songs and dances would be turned to mourning because of their faithlessness:

Lamentations 5:14–15 (LSB)

Elders have ceased from being at the gate, Young men from their music. The joy of our hearts has ceased; Our dancing has been turned into mourning.

Amos 8:10 (LSB)

“Then I will overturn your feasts into mourning And all your songs into lamentation; And I will bring up sackcloth on everyone’s loins And baldness on every head. And I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, And the end of it will be like a bitter day.

But here at the end of Psalm 87, the picture is the opposite—the faithful saints of the city of God delighting in God’s blessing!

Psalm 30:11 (LSB)

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness,

But what does it mean for the singers and the dancers to say “All my springs are in You”? There are two ways we can understand this verse—one is to understand, Christian that

All your LIFE comes FROM God (John 7:38)

To say, “Lord, all the “fountains” of my life—everything that is good and happy and prosperous and delightful—all of it finds its source in You!” As the psalmist says in Psalm 36--

Psalm 36:9 (LSB)

For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.

And as Jesus promised in John 7:38:

John 7:38 (LSB)

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”

Remember in 2 Chronicles 32, when King Hezekiah had to dig water tunnels to keep the Assyrians from threatening Jerusalem’s water supply? Psalm 87 says that in the city of God’s faithful people there is no fear that any enemy will be able to separate them from the Water of Life that flows through them! Nothing will ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus!

Our righteousness, our salvation, our holiness before God all flows from Christ—all our life comes from him. And if we look at this declaration from the other direction, we can say “all my springs are in You” in the sense that

All that FLOWS from you goes BACK to God (Rm 11:36; cp. Rev. 4:10)

For the Christian, everything that you do, everything that you are, everything that you desire and everything that you become is all for the purpose of being found in Jesus Christ! Your career, your family, your accomplishments, your dreams goals and aspirations are all aimed at finding their completion in Him! As Paul puts it in Romans 11:36

Romans 11:36 (LSB)

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

And he says the same thing in Colossians 1:16:

Colossians 1:16 (LSB)

For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

The final picture we have of the city of God’s faithful saints—the heavenly Zion—is is Revelation. And what do we find the saints doing there?

Revelation 4:10–11 (LSB)

the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”

Christian—you are called to live as a faithful member of God’s obedient covenant people. You are called to share His glad and loyal love for the citadel of His saints. Though the world around you disdains and discounts this city—though they mock and ridicule and blaspheme—you are to live as a faithful citizen of that congregation of the saints, the Kingdom of God, the Heavenly Zion, here in these last days revealed as His Church.

The old Puritans used to speak of what it meant to be a “churchman”—a faithful and loyal son or daughter of the Church. In these days when loyalty and faithfulness to anything seems weird or suspect, we need to recover the kind of loyal delight and commitment to God’s people that is reflected in this Psalm.

This is hard for us, because of our modern squeamishness about being perceived as “brainwashed” or “cultic” if we express our firm loyalty to the Church. But being a true son of the Church is never so much in evidence as when we are willing to stand up and call out error in the church. Martin Luther was a man who loved the Church—and was willing to go all the way to Rome in order to bring it out of its error and back to faithfulness to Scripture.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic tragedy The Silmarillion describes a city called Gondolin, a fortress city hidden away in the mountains. It remained safe and secure for generations, until one of its inhabitants, Maeglin, betrayed its location because he believed he would be given rulership of the city for doing so. Or consider the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., when Ephialtes of Trachis believed the Persians would reward him for betraying King Leonidas and the Greek army.

In the same way, there are men and women inside the citadel of God’s people today who believe that they will gain rewards and acclaim from the world if they make the Church look just a little more like the Paris Olympics. They like being invited to White House Christmas parties, they like seeing their names on the bylines of New York Times articles; they want the beloved Citadel of Zion to let just a few of Morgoth’s raiders inside the gates; they want to bring just a couple of Persians over the mountain path. And so they claim the Bible doesn’t say anything about abortion, or that the Bible barely even mentions homosexuality, or that Jesus’ command “Love your neighbor” means open borders and forced COVID vaccines.

But a true son or daughter Zion—a churchman—loves the holiness in which this City is founded! The foundation of this Citadel is built on the Cornerstone of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:20; 1 Cor. 3:11)

1 Corinthians 3:11 (LSB)

For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now, to be sure, the Church cannot fail—Jesus said as much, that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). But individual churches fail all the time. Local churches that begin to compromise on the authority of God’s Word, that desire less to speak glorious things about the City of God and more to have the world speak glorious things about them. But you, Christian, delight in the Zion of God by defending her holiness.

Share God’s loyal love for His citadel of the saints by defending her holiness, and by delighting in her fellowship. Consider from this psalm that everyone who inhabits God’s city are former enemies! Egyptian, Babylonian, Philistine, atheist, reviler, sodomite, thief, rebel, blasphemer—none of us were set to inherit anything but wrath and eternal torment from God:

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 (LSB)

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Christian, if there is no one in the Kingdom of God—no one in His Church—that you have any right to disregard or stand in judgment over because of where they came from before they knew Christ. Because every one of us would be destined for wrath were it not for the electing love of God upon us! And so make that fellowship glorious—make the love and delight and brotherhood that binds us together as a church one of the “glorious things” that are spoken of us! Jesus said in John 13:34-35

John 13:34–35 (LSB)

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

And Christian, if God could work such a miracle as this—to take creatures of wrath and rebellion and turn them into His own “native-born” children of His Kingdom, then you have every confidence that He will do it for those who are still His enemies!

We saw last week in Psalm 86 that

Psalm 86:9 (LSB)

All nations whom You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, And they shall glorify Your name.

And here in Psalm 87 the same promise. All the nations—even the ones who today are raging against YHWH and His Anointed—will someday be counted as His native-born sons and daughters. When Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven after His resurrection, He was given all of the nations as His inheritance:

Daniel 7:13–14 (LSB)

“I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And came near before Him. “And to Him was given dominion, Glory, and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not be taken away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.

The nations belong to Him now, and the day is coming when they will all be named with His Name. The final vision of the beloved Citadel, the City of God, is given to us in Revelation 21, and all of the imagery here in Psalm 87 is reflected there:

Revelation 21:10–11 (LSB)

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her brilliance was like precious stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper.

And as John describes the glory of that City in all its holiness and splendor, he writes that

Revelation 21:22–24 (LSB)

And I saw no sanctuary in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its sanctuary. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. And the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.

Christian, this is your homeland! This beloved citadel, this glorious City, this New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of Zion, the people of God from Adam to Zechariah to the saints at Pentecost to every single believer throughout the New Testament era right down to you and me—and it is a City which cannot fail!

So sing the glories of this dwelling of the people of God, the Church—delight in the gates of the gathered people of God in worship week by week; defend her walls with uncompromising commitment to His Word, serve with love and loyalty your brothers and sisters that dwell in her, all washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. Go out into this weary, broken, rebellious world with the Good News that God is still gathering a people for Himself—that there is no sinner so wretched, no life so rebellious, no deeds so dark or heart so hateful towards Him or His people, that He cannot rescue out of that sin and make them into His own child!

And friend, if you are here this morning but you do not count yourself among His people; if you are still holding the claims of Christ on your obedience at arm’s length or are still counting on your good works to outweigh your bad; if you look down on Christians and the Church as hypocrites and conceited religious pretenders, then let me plead with you in the words of the final description of the City of God given to us at the end of the Book of Revelation:

Revelation 22:11–17 (LSB)

“Let the one who does unrighteousness, still do unrighteousness; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still do righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy.” “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to his work. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the authority to the tree of life and may enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying. “I, Jesus, sent My angel to bear witness to you of these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who wishes receive the water of life without cost.

His offer stands for you this morning—come, and welcome! to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Ephesians 6:23–24 (LSB)

Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________