Selected from: The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) Moderatorial Address at the General Assembly, 2023.
As we meet in General Assembly, we gather from various parts of the country and the world. We come with different experiences in our personal and church life, some of which are positive and others that are negative. As servants of the Lord in the 21st century, we face perennial challenges that have been common to the Church in all ages, as well as others that are unique to our own day.
If I have my finger on the pulse, though I presently live at a distance from most of you, many it seems are struggling with a prevailing sense of discouragement. Times are hard for the Church in Scotland and the moral demise of the nation has its own oppressive effects on the hearts of God’s people. I would like to speak to that today and encourage you to set your eyes on the bigger picture, in the hope that it will feed your faith and excite you to ongoing and increasing prayer and labor in the Lord’s vineyard.
We turn to Psalm 87 which bears the title “A Psalm for the sons of Korah.” The notation tells us that it was explicitly written for public worship in the Temple. We are not told when it was written, and some scholars have attributed it to David. Others locate it in the days of Hezekiah, and others argue it was written after the return from captivity. So the date is uncertain, but what is clear is that it speaks to all these historical eras as well as to the Church today. Indeed, it takes us beyond all these to our eternal hope. The theme of Psalm 87 and our address is Zion, the City of God and specifically the glorious things God has said of her.
I. A Glorious City
The Psalm begins quite abruptly, almost with an outburst in v.1 “His foundation is in the holy mountains.” Then Zion and her gates are introduced in v.2, after which she is give title of the “City of God” (v.3). The verses refer to the city of Jerusalem and in particular the Palace and Temple complex at its heart. This was glorious and there are a number of aspects of this glory that can be considered of the city historically.
First, her foundation was glorious. “His foundation is in the holy mountains.” It was God who founded His city in the mountains of Zion. They were not the highest hills in the region, but they were “holy” because God had set them apart for a purpose and according to His promise. In Deut. 12:5,6,11, the Lord said He would establish a central place to which the tribes of Israel would gather at His sanctuary. In the days of David, when he had conquered the last stronghold of the Jebusites, Zion was established as the Royal and Priestly city, to be the center of Israel’s civil and religious life. It was from Mount Zion that Israel’s Covenant kings would reign, and the Temple would be built upon its neighboring Mount Moriah. God set it apart and sanctified the sanctuary with His presence as the place He would dwell with His people “The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; an high hill as the hill of Bashan. Why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in; yea, the Lord will dwell in it for ever” (Ps. 68:15-16). The city was “Jehovah Shammah” because the Lord was there.
Its foundation was glorious because it was founded pre-eminently as a Gospel place. God would meet with sinful men in its Temple by sacrifice. In addition to His earlier promise, He had given two significant Gospel pictures at Mount Moriah. It was on this mountain that God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in the place of Isaac (Gen. 22). Later David stayed the Judgment of God upon Israel by purchasing the threshing floor of Araunah and building an altar there to sacrifice to God so that His plague of judgment would be turned from Israel (2 Kings 24:18-25). So it was in this place and upon Gospel ground that God laid the foundation of His holy city.
Second, her worship was glorious. In v.2 we read, “The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” The whole land was the land of promise and all the dwellings of Jacob were a delight to Him as His people worshipped in their families. However, this was the place appointed for the congregation of Israel to gather publicly. “Jerusalem is built as a city that is compact together: Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord” (Ps. 122:3-4). Some people assembled there weekly, sometimes daily, but the tribes of Israel went up to Jerusalem to observe their three annual pilgrim feasts. They left their tribal regions for the holy city, where God was glorified most in the public gathering of His people. Sacrifices were offered. Her singers and players on instruments were there, and, in her precincts, the voice of God’s praise was made glorious.
Third, her promises were glorious. God had promised to set the place apart for His dwelling, and, so having founded Zion, He would preserve and advance it in the presence of, and in spite of the hostility of, surrounding enemies. Israel’s enemies would seek the city’s destruction because they hated Israel’s God, but the “most high established her” (v.5), and they would only be able to do what the God of Israel allowed. God’s preservation of the city would even lead His enemies to wonder and fear: “God is known in her palaces for a refuge. For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together. They saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and hasted away. Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail” (Ps. 48:3-6).
When Israel’s enemies attacked, they realized to their peril that the God of the city would stand for her defence. Go and inquire of the Assyrians who learned that God was her refuge and strength. Ask them of the God who, in one night, slew one hundred and eighty five thousand of Sennacharib’s host! But our Psalm also shows us that not only would Zion’s enemies be destroyed, some of them would be converted. In vv.4-5, people from Rahab, which refers to Egypt, together with Babylon and Philistia, would become as native-born inhabitants of the city of God. We get to see this, in part, in the Old Testament as a stream of Proselytes come to trust in the God of Israel (e.g., Uriah the Hittite and Ittai the Gittite).
Fourth, her springs were glorious. The Psalmist declares in v.7, “all my springs are in thee.” The springs he speaks of refer to sources of satisfaction. The true Israelite realized the preciousness of what God had provided for him in Zion. The ministration God established there, though not as glorious as that which was to come, was glorious still. God fed His people on Christ through the ceremonial worship He had appointed. “For the Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread” (Ps. 132:13-15).
When the godly were cut off from the city, they longed for Zion, envying even the sparrows nesting in her altars (Ps. 84:1-4). In captivity, they refused to forget her: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Ps. 137:5-6).
These glorious things were all spoken of and experienced in the historical Zion, the city of God. But Psalm 87 of course takes us far beyond these historical blessings in Jerusalem. So we need to consider in the second place;
II. The Glorious Church
The Puritan Stephen Charnock notes that this Psalm speaks of a greater city, because the earthly city of God was ruined by Babylon and, when rebuilt, was later destroyed by the Romans. It remains under the hoof of the Mohammedans to this day. It is clear that the most glorious things spoken of Zion are fulfilled in the New Testament Church. The New Covenant believer is said to have come “unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb. 12:22-23).
Israel’s Redeemer, Jesus Christ, came to Zion and was rejected and crucified there, but the Father raised up His Beloved Son and “set his king on his holy hill” in the spiritual Zion. The earthly city was a type and shadow of this. God’s spiritual Zion is a city with a better foundation, better promises, larger increase, perfect stability and greater joy. We will now consider some of the glorious things that God has spoken of her.
First, the Church’s foundation is glorious. Jerusalem was founded on the hills of Zion according to plan of God who desired to dwell there for a time. The foundation of the Church far exceeds this as the Divine architect knew the strong foundation required for her to stand. He builds her on the holy mountain of His eternal covenant with His Son.
She therefore stands on the sure and immutable oath and promise of the God who cannot lie so that what is said of the earth for a time is true of the Church forever: “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee” (Isa. 54:10). God willed the Church to be, together with all things needed for her salvation and preservation to eternal glory. Nothing can change the word that He has spoken, nor will He ever break His Covenant.
Furthermore, the Church is built on the immovable rock of the Incarnate Son Himself. God has laid in His Zion a tried, precious, and sure cornerstone (Isa. 28:16). That stone is Christ, and “other foundation can no man lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). The Saviour said of Himself, “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). So the whole integrity and security of the holy city rests here, and, because of this, she shall never be moved or destroyed.
Second, the Church’s worship is glorious. God erected His Temple in Jerusalem, and to that place the tribes went up. God loved all the worship offered to Him in the private dwellings of Jacob, but He loved this more. Whereas Deut. 12 predicted one place would be established for Israel’s worship, the prophets predict a day when worship will be offered to God in “every place” (Mal. 1:11). Jerusalem and Gerizim do not matter anymore (John 4:21-24), but rather the Church of Christ in all the earth, gathering together publicly in name of Christ.
There the Saints of God Assemble. Our worship in private and family is glorifying to God, but He gets more glory when his church gathers together to praise and confess His name and worship Him according to the appointed pattern. This is the most glorious thing we do on earth and what brings Him most glory. Then, when we gather, the God of the Church is present. As the Shekinah glory filled the Old Testament sanctuary, it was but a shadow of this greater glory. Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.” The Father, Son and Spirit founded His Church to inhabit her praises, and so we are the “Habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22). The angels of God are present too, desiring to look into the things of our salvation. God glorified Himself and they sang His praise when He created the universe, but that creation was dumb and glorifies Him only passively. It is the Church that he has formed in the earth alone that glorifies Him actively and consciously and voluntarily, and it is as sinners are converted to worship God from among all nations that the mystery that was hidden is revealed even to the Angels who delight in it (Eph. 3:9-10).
Third, the Church’s promises are glorious. Ps. 87:4-6 speaks of Zion and her children. Sinners from all nations will be born from her womb and nourished up within her gates. Each one them born of the Spirit of God and counted in the Divine Census: “The Lord shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there” (v.6). Gentiles will become Zion’s native sons ― Rahab, which refers to Egypt in a word that means fierceness and pride, together with Babylon and Philistia who were violent and inveterate enemies of God’s people and who waged war against them and led them into captivity. Now this and that former enemy would be found a child of Zion. But the promises introduced here are far more expansive than this.
A Fulness of the Gentiles will come in. God says of her, “The Gentiles will come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising” (Isa. 60:1-2). Zion’s gates will not be shut day or night but strangers will flood through and use their wealth and labor to build her walls. In New Testament times “The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it” (Isa. 2:2). Many glorious promises are made of this ― too many to mention here. But consider the following:
“For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been? Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me” (Isa. 49:19-23). “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee” (Ps. 22:27). “His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed” (Ps. 72:17). “All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name” (Ps. 86:9).
Not only will a fulness of the Gentiles come in, but the Jews will turn to their Messiah. He came to their Zion, and they crucified Him there. For this sinful rejection, their earthly city and temple were destroyed and Israel, after the flesh, was cut off. Yet their casting off was not total, nor was it final. We learn in Rom. 11 that Christ will graft them in again to their own olive tree, and that “if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?” (Rom. 11:12). Do you see Zion’s glory? People from all nations are flooding through her spiritual gates, and the Jews are called back into the Church upon this even more glorious gospel advance so that “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). Not as rivers are found in places here and there upon the land, but go and stand upon the ocean shore and see how the waters cover the sea and you will get the right perspective!
But the promises to Zion take us beyond this to the final and eternal glory of the Church. In the day of the Great Census when God counts Zion’s sons; every one of them born in her, in time, will be brought through her gates into the heavenly city at last. Not one of them shall be missing. Whatever the glory is that is presented to us in the thousand years of Rev. 20, it pales in comparison to the glory of the first verses of the next chapter: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:1-3).
What glory is this! The fame of Egypt, the strength of Babylon, the grandeur of the Roman Empire, and all kingdoms and nations after it, is nothing in comparison to this holy city, the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Fourth, the Church’s stability is glorious. We do well to remember this because, to the natural eye, the Church does not always seem to be stable in the world. Sometimes it looks like Zion is floating on a turbulent sea rather than established on the rock. But look at what God says in v.5: “And the highest himself shall establish her.” No other institution in the history of the world has this promise written into its constitution. No particular church or denomination can claim it absolutely, but our hearts as God’s servants go way beyond our own denomination and name. It is Christ’s Church, of which we are a branch, and all we are members, that will endure forever.
Thank God that her stability and defence does not depend on the strength and wisdom of men or angels, but on the incontestable power of the Most High. For this reason, no weapon that is formed against her shall prosper (Isa. 54:17), and history has proven this to be true. The Church is still here! Egypt could not destroy her; Babylon failed; the Roman Empire tried to crush her; and Islam took its sword to spill her blood. All the malice of the Roman Harlot Church could not destroy her, and all the atheist and secular isms of our day have conspired to silence and vanquish her ― yet still she stands!
She will always have a place in the wilderness prepared for her by God, and the Dragon will never prevail against her (Rev. 12). Every persecution unleashed upon her will only aid her preservation and purification.
A man might as well punch granite with his bare fist than set himself against the Church of Christ. There would be more chance of a leaf holding back the wind than the world prevailing against the Church. As Charnock explains, God will preserve her forever because His glory is bound up in her. Christ will not cease to be her prophet to teach her; her priest to intercede for her; her king to rule and defend her from all his, and our, enemies. Our King will always have His kingdom! When His cause is low, He has promised her glorious revivings. Though she may lie for a time like God’s two witnesses in the street, He will bring life to her again (Rev. 11), and the kingdoms of this world will yet become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ. Civil powers, false religions, wicked men, Satan, his beast, and the Antichrist will try to kill her but she will survive alone to attend all their funerals.
Fifth, the Church’s springs are glorious. We can say of the Church what Israel said of Zion: “all my springs are in thee” (v.7). All my affections are bound up in the Church of Christ so that I love her above my chief joy in this world. I love her springs because they are the means that Christ brings this joy and satisfaction to me.
Our king has deposited rich supplies for the inhabitants of His Zion in the means of grace. Through the ministry of the Word of God, the administration of the sacraments and prayer, He gives us Himself and all the benefits of His Covenant. As all fulness dwells in our Head, so the Church will always have food and water enough in the wilderness. Our Shepherd King prepares the table for us there, even in the presence of our enemies, and we eat the feast of fat things in his holy mountain (Isa. 25:6). His city can last out any siege because she does not depend on the world but upon Him for her supplies. There is an abundance in Christ for all who shelter behind her walls. Springs of water, the finest of the wheat, wine well refined on the lees, honey and milk ― all without money and without price; and it can never run out.
We give the last word at this point to Charles Spurgeon:
Never let thy praises cease, O thou bride of Christ, thou fairest among women, thou in whom the Lord himself hath placed his delight, calling thee by that pearl of names, Hephzibah, “for my delight is in her.” Since the Lord has chosen thee, and deigns to dwell in thee, O thou city of beauty, none can rival thee, thou art the eye of the world, the pearl, the queen of all the cities of the universe; the true “eternal city,” the metropolitan, the mother of us all. The years to come shall unveil thy beauties to the astonished eyes of all peoples, and the day of thy splendour shall come to its sevenfold noon.
III. Believing Glorious Things
I want to take you back now to the beginning. We said that the Church faces its own peculiar discouragements in our age, and to listen to the conversation of Christians and see downcast ministers, we need to apply these truths believingly to our hearts that in turn we may direct our labour. So, consider, in closing, these four points of application.
First, you must lay hold of these glorious promises. Whatever you think of the present, the Church’s future is glorious. This fact has motivated Christians in the past, who laboured in dark days, and it is a hope that remains for us.
The Church of Christ will never be defeated so we must resist the temptation of acting like she is. It is true that the security of the Church is not given absolutely to any given branch of her, but it is equally true that the promised triumph of the Gospel is to fuel your labour in the present. There is too much negativity in our ranks, brethren. Too much lamenting that it is not with us now as it was with our fathers; and, while we might be justifiably and righteously sad for the state of things, we ought not to be paralyzed by them.
There are few things in the history of the Church that have stirred Christians to work more than the “glorious things” that are spoke here. I remind you that the mouth of Lord has spoken it, and therefore it is done. Those promised days exist as if they were already here, and a jealousy for God’s glory should motivate you to pray and labor for their coming. We need to stop walking, praying, and laboring by sight, and instead lay hold of these truths by faith. Can the witnesses rise again? Yes. Son of man can these bones live? Yes. Will the Lord build up Zion and appear in His glory? Yes. Will the nations yet flock to Jerusalem, and will God not restore the desolate places and make his Jerusalem a praise on the earth and make kings her nursing fathers? Yes, He will, and this has to be more than a promise or an eschatological theory, but rather a living and animating hope.
Second, get the right estimate of things in the present. The Church is at a low ebb in Scotland and counted as nothing in the eyes of the world. Indeed, they would mock and ridicule us as an irrelevance; but brothers, stop living and thinking of the Church today as if the estimate of the world is correct. We are to judge the Church by what God says of her, not what the world thinks. Zion was surrounded by her enemies and miniscule among the nations when the Church sang “Why leap ye, ye high hills, this is the Hill where God desires to dwell!” Glorious for situation the joy of the whole land! The Church in Scotland that you lament is so small is the most glorious thing about the nation. When the saints of God gather, though we may be few, God’s eye is upon us. When you judge with the judgment of the world and evaluate your glory by a head count, do you not forget that the king’s daughter has an internal beauty (“she is all glorious within”) not seen with the eye?
Of course we long for better days, but let us not add to our sins by provoking the Lord in despising the day of small things in which we live. “O” we say, “our churches our small. Our congregations are old. We are getting smaller,” as if any churches in Britain are evidencing radical growth! With our eyes fixed firmly on our feet, we plod up to the house of God with heavy hearts, all the while telling God that we do not understand what glorious things he has said of us. Does God not still love the gates of Zion? Then you should, and approach them like you did. Are not all our springs to be found in her? Then come like David: “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee” (Ps. 63:1-3).
If, in the days of Hezekiah, they were singing Psalm 87 with the Assyrians at the gates, can you imagine the defiance of the congregation? Imagine them singing it. And listen to them singing Psalm 137, confessing their love for Zion in their synagogues in Babylon. The truth is that these Psalms have fueled the hope of the Church of God for thousands of years and, as the saints sang and prayed them, God Himself heard and answered to bring us to the point of Gospel expansion that we have seen to the present day. But there is more, and so we continue to sing and pray them with the hope for their ever increasing fulfilment.
Third, keep preaching the glorious Gospel. This is how God is most glorified in the world, and one of the sad features of dark days is that the Church turns inward and stops preaching this message with passion, with the result that we see no conversions. To state the obvious, there will be no conversions if we will not go out boldly and declare this message. Whether men hear and believe or whether they don’t, we desire to bring glory to our King, and He is most glorified when the message of a Crucified Christ is publicly declared and freely offered to sinners in the Church and the world.
Part of our complaint and discouragement is that we are surrounded by enemies and oppressors, but brothers, look at the Psalm! Who is born in Zion? Egyptians who enslaved the Church. Babylonians who destroyed the city. Philistines who were set for war. So get out among their spiritual heirs in the world today and start preaching the Gospel, and pray that this man and that man might be born of God in Zion.
Finally, keep living to the glory of Christ. The Church’s foundations are in the holy mountains, and that is fitting because, in another place, it is said of God’s house that “holiness becomes it forever” (Ps. 93:5). It is part of the glory of the Church that we reflect the glory of God in being clothed in holiness of life. A day like ours brings the real temptation to lower the standard when our glory is to hold it fast. Our day is not a day for less holiness, but more. Glorious things will be said of thee by the world, though they hate the very holiness we endeavour to walk in. And glorious things will be said of us by God because He loves it.
In the light of these glorious truths it is time to unfurl the banner to live, worship, and witness, that it might be asked concerning us “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” (Song. 6:10). And the answer will be returned, it is Zion, the Church of the living God, and the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom glorious things are spoken.
