We joyfully confess the biblical truth of the self-sufficiency of God. The theological term for this divine self-sufficiency is aseity, which comes from the Latin phrase a se, meaning “from himself.” God exists “from himself” and is dependent on no one else for his being. By contrast, everything else that exists depends on him. Furthermore, God is self-sufficient in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity. There was never a time when God was alone and in need of a companion. He has always existed in the loving fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is absolutely nothing outside of God that could add anything to him that he lacks in himself. God is completely a se, self-sufficient, dependent on nothing outside of himself.
It is only when we understand this truth about God that the wonder of a psalm like this comes to light. This psalm speaks of something that is not God, namely, a city. It is the city of Zion (i.e., Jerusalem), the city that God has made his dwelling place and his delight. Although he is infinitely exalted above all creatures, our self-sufficient, majestic, transcendent God has freely chosen to dwell among men in the place he has sanctified.
When I was in seminary this truth came home to me in a dramatic way when I took a course on the theology of Karl Barth. Barth is widely considered the most important theologian of the twentieth century. He wrote, taught, and ministered in Germany and in Switzerland at a time when liberal theology was the dominant force in European divinity schools. Liberal theology had, in a sense, sought to remake God in the image of man. It had severely compromised the biblical truth of God’s exalted transcendence, majesty, and self-sufficiency. Into this situation Karl Barth dropped a bombshell of profoundly God-centered theology, calling the church once again to recognize the transcendent majesty of God. I can recall reading some passages from his writings that I found deeply moving for their profound reverence before a holy God. And yet Barth likewise understood that the sovereign, transcendent, self-sufficient God of the Bible has not chosen to remain merely God for himself. The wonder of all wonders is that he has chosen to be God for us. Barth wrote of God, “He wills to be ours, and He wills that we should be His. He wills to belong to us and He wills that we should belong to Him. He does not will to be without us, and He does not will that we should be without Him. He wills certainly to be God and He does not will that we should be God. But He does not will to be God for Himself nor as God to be alone with Himself. He wills as God to be for us and with us who are not God.” God, under no compulsion or necessity, has chosen in his sovereign freedom not to remain forever God within himself, but to open himself to man and to be God for man forever. This is forever his identity. An analogy would be the day I made the decision to marry Joni. I existed as myself prior to that day, and had I never married her I would still be myself. Likewise, God was God before us, and would have been God forever without us. But on my wedding day I chose to be identified for the rest of my life not just as myself but as the husband of Joni. In the same way, God has chosen to make his identity forever the God who dwells with men. His promise to Abraham was that he would be “God to you and to your offspring after you” (Gen. 17:7). Thus his very name in the Old Testament becomes “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
So today we come to a psalm that is not directly about God but rather about his dwelling place, the city and its inhabitants among whom God has chosen to dwell. This is a psalm of Zion, much like Psalms 46, 48, 78, and 132. It celebrates the holy city because it is a city sanctified by the presence of God. And, as the whole of Scripture teaches, it is the city that points us to the real Zion, our eternal home. Children of Zion, celebrate with the psalmist this morning your heavenly home, the place where the self-existent, self-sufficient God has chosen to dwell with you and to be God for you forever.
Notice two appearances of the musical notation selah in this psalm, one after v. 3 and the other after v. 6. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what the word itself means, but it is often helpful in marking divisions within the psalms. If we take our two selahs as cues, we see that this psalm divides naturally into three sections, each one telling us something about the glory of the city of Zion, each one beckoning us to find our delight there rather than here. First, according to verses 1-3,
I take this point from the last part of verse 3, where Zion is addressed, “O city of God.” That is a fitting summary of the city’s identity based on four things that have been said about it previously in these three verses.
Notice first its origin in verse 1: “On the holy mount stands the city he founded.” Literally, the Hebrew reads, “His foundation is in the holy mountains,” putting the words “His foundation” first to emphasize that the city was founded by God himself. The origin of the city of Zion is none other than God. Of course, the book of 2 Samuel tells us that David conquered the city and took it from the Jebusites. But we must not imagine that he did this alone! Second Samuel 5:9-10 tell us, “And David lived in the stronghold and called it the city of David. And David built the city all around from the Millo inward. And David became greater and greater, for the LORD, the God of hosts, was with him.” God’s favor upon Jerusalem is simply an extension of his favor to David. The city and the king are bound to one another, and thus we must read each psalm of Zion in the Psalter as an expression, not merely of God’s favor to a certain city, but of his steadfast, covenant love to the house of David and his ongoing commitment never to disown his line.
Throughout the Bible, the two motifs of God’s people and God’s place come up again and again and again. Adam and Eve, as God’s people, dwelled in God’s place, the Garden of Eden. Later Israel, God’s people, dwelled in God’s place, the land of Canaan. And yet within Israel God had a favored seed, the line of David. And within the land of Canaan he had a favored place, the city of Jerusalem. And so it is from this particular seed of Abraham (David) and this particular city (Jerusalem) from which the fulfillment of God’s promises would later come in the person of his Messiah, the Son of David and the true temple of God.
Having noted its origin as the city founded by God, let us also notice in verse 1 its location. The ESV says, “On the holy mount.” I think it is better translated, as some versions render it, “in the holy mountains.” Psalm 125:2 speaks of the mountains that surround Jerusalem. The psalmist here notes especially that these are mountains of holiness, a place uniquely set apart to God. When Moses ascended Mount Sinai and met God in a burning bush, he was told to remove his sandals, for the place on which he stood was holy ground. The presence of God had sanctified it, just as the presence of God would later sanctify the mountains around Jerusalem. The city God founded resides in the holy mountains, a meeting place between God and men.
Notice third the city’s privileged status in verse 2: “The LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.” Here the exaltation of the city is based on the free, sovereign election of God. He has placed his affection on this city above all others. We see from this verse and many others like it that the love of God has a particularity to it. To be sure, there is a universal aspect of God’s love that we will see in verses 4-6, but we must not set that in opposition to the clear particularity of God’s affection expressed here. God prefers one city above all others, just as he has chosen one people among all others. “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” he told the people of Israel through Malachi in order to convince them that they were loved. Scripture very clearly teaches that God is a God who elects, who focuses his love, on particulars, just as a husband focuses his most intense affections on one particular woman, not on women in general. Celebrate the particularity of God’s love for you, children of Zion.
This idea of God’s election is closely related to the biblical teaching of God’s dwelling place. In his sovereignty, God has chosen throughout history to cause his presence to dwell in certain places among certain people. It began in the Garden of Eden, God’s holy dwelling place and the temple of creation. After the exodus, God caused his name to dwell in the tabernacle in the camp of the Israelites. After David conquered Jerusalem, he brought the ark of God to dwell there, and God later sanctified the holy city again by causing the cloud of his presence to rest on the glorious temple that Solomon had built. But when we flip from the era of promise to the era of fulfillment, we see that all along these dwelling places were mere types of something greater to come. For when Jesus Christ personally cleansed the temple in Jerusalem, he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John tells us he was speaking about the temple of his body, for Christ is now the presence of God among his people. The coming of Christ marked the end of the era of the temple, which had done its service in pointing to Christ and subsequently was destroyed. Now, Paul and Peter tell us, we are the very dwelling place of God, for we belong to Christ, and Christ certainly dwells with us. And our home, our destiny, is another city of which the New Testament testifies, the true, heavenly Jerusalem, to which we belong. Hebrews 12:22 reads, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” One day, all who belong to Christ will be gathered together to the city of God’s eternal dwelling, the city of which the earthly Zion, for all of its glory, was merely a type and a shadow. We will dwell forever in the true Jerusalem, the city that God loves above all others.
We have seen that Zion is the city of God based on its origin, location, and privileged status. Fourth, note its glory in verse 3: “Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.” I take it that the psalmist is referring to God’s words, spoken through his prophets, about the city. Take Psalm 48:1, for example, which reads, “His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.” Isaiah foretold, among other places, of the coming restoration of Jerusalem in Isaiah 62: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed ‘Forsaken,’ and your land shall no more be termed ‘Desolate,’ but you shall be called ‘My Delight Is in Her,’ and your land ‘Married’; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.” The Scripture teaches that because of God’s delight in Zion, he has destined this city and its inhabitants for glory.
Of course, we recognize the importance of that word “glory.” Most often we speak of it in relation to God. We rightly recognize, with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, that the chief end of man (i.e., the primary reason we exist) is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But the Bible also speaks of the glory of those people and places in whom he delights. In fact, I would go so far as to say that while the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, God has determined to make that happen by glorifying man and enjoying him forever. We are, in other words, destined for glory. “Those whom he foreknew,” Paul writes in Romans 8:29-30, “he also predestined, and those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.” C. S. Lewis, in his profound essay, “The Weight of Glory,” put it this way: “It is written that we shall ‘stand before’ Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is a promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.” Children of Zion, knowing who you are in yourself, knowing how your natural desire is to annihilate God and set yourself in his place, and seeing how in thousands and thousands of different ways you have acted on that sinful impulse throughout your life, marvel at the fact that you are the object of God’s affection, and that you are destined for glory in the city of his delight! Look at the people sitting around you and see in this gathering that we, of all people, are and will ever be, as Lewis wrote, “a real ingredient in the divine happiness.” God, who needs nothing from us, has nevertheless chosen to make us his delight, for we belong to Zion, the city of God.
The psalmist goes on to tell us more of Zion. In verses 4-6 we read, second, that
Verses 1-3 focus on the particularity of God’s love. His love is focused on one city above all others. But this is not to the exclusion of the universal scope of his love, as we see here. For in verses 4-6 we read that God’s love for Zion is not limited to Zion’s earthly inhabitants. Instead, we see that by God’s grace, there are citizens of Zion all over the world.
Verse 4 mentions five nations. “Rahab” is another name for Egypt. It was the major power to the south of Israel. Babylon was located east of Israel. Philistia sat to the west as a nearby neighbor, and Tyre was in the north. Together, these four nations represent all four directions on the compass. And then Cush is mentioned, the nation that we know as Ethiopia. It appears to be on the list as a representative of all distant lands (The NLB translates it, “even distant Ethiopia”). Together, these five nations stand as representatives of all nations of the world.
What is said about them is simply amazing. At the beginning of the verse they are referred to as numbered “among those who know me.” But who is the “me”? God is the primary speaker in verses 4-6. God is speaking of those who know him. And, of course, to “know” God in a biblical sense is to belong to him, to be numbered among his covenant people. God is declaring, in this psalm about the glory of Zion, that the peoples of Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Cush, indeed, the Gentiles who span the globe, are among those who know him! How does the glory of Zion intersect with the inclusion of the Gentiles among God’s covenant people? The end of the verse tells us: “This one was born there.” And then you notice that this is an important statement, because it is repeated two more times, so that all three verses in this section contain this statement or something very similar to it. There are two questions we must answer about this statement.
First, what does the statement mean? It means that among the inhabitants of the nations of the world, there are many who are counted as having been born in Zion. Even though they are not natives of Jerusalem, they are being counted as its citizens, just as if they had been born there. This is where the glory of Zion and the inclusion of the Gentiles intersects. God does not save the Gentiles except by including them among the people of Zion. The Gentiles do not approach God except through the Messiah of Israel. They do not stand as part of the covenant people except by being named children of Abraham, wild branches grafted into the tree of God’s holy nation.
The second question to ask about this statement, “This one was born there,” is, who is the speaker? In verse 4 the ESV reads, “‘This one was born there,’ they say.” However, the words “they say” are not in the Hebrew. Those words were added by the translators of the ESV to help readers make sense of the passage. However, I think it makes better sense to leave those words out and recognize that in all three verses (4, 5, and 6), God is the one who is speaking. God is the one who says of those among the nations, “This one was born there,” in verse 4, and, “This one and that one were born in her” concerning Zion in verse 5. And we are told explicitly in verse 6, “The LORD records as he registers the peoples, ‘This one was born there.’” If we see God as the speaker, we note that the primary emphasis of this section is on the power of the word of God to declare a new reality. Do you recall the prophecy of Hosea 1:10, where God says, “And in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God’”? In Hosea this verse refers to God’s promise to restore Israel to himself, but Paul quotes this verse among others from Hosea in Romans 9:25-26, recognizing the larger truth that God has called the Gentiles, those who were not his people, his people.
But how can this be? How can God declare of someone who manifestly was not born in Zion, “This one was born there”? Here we must note what Paul says about God in three strategic places in Romans 4. At the end of the chapter, verse 24, Paul says that God is the one “who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord.” At the beginning of the chapter in verse 5 he identifies God as the one “who justifies the ungodly.” And in the middle of the chapter in verse 17 he says God is the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” In all three cases, God’s powerful word enters a situation where there is only death and nothingness and creates a new reality. It is the glory of God to declare over the unclean Gentiles across the globe that they belong to Zion, indeed, that they were born there! And by the power of the word of God, it is so.
What does this mean for us? It means that Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, is ours by birthright. It means that our identity is determined by our citizenship in the city of God. I can imagine that Paul had Psalm 87 in mind when he wrote Galatians 4:26, “But the Jerusalem above [in contrast to the present Jerusalem] is free, and she is our mother.” It means that your identity is not determined primarily by your American citizenship or your Chinese citizenship or your citizenship in any other nation of the world, nor is it determined by your bloodline or your occupation or where you went to college. Your identity is determined by the fact that you belong to Zion, that your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, that the powerful word of God has come to you in your sin and alienation and, finding only death and nothingness, has declared and made it so: You belong! You are a welcome member of God’s eternal dwelling place!
It also means for us that our mission, so long as we are in this present evil age awaiting our inheritance, is to go to all nations and be the means by which God will execute his powerful, transformative word. Every time we baptize a new believer, we are saying, “This one was born there! This one belongs to the new Jerusalem!” By God’s grace, we have the privilege of participating in God’s plan to make Zion the spiritual metropolis of whole world.
Zion is the city of God, and as such, it is the mother of a worldwide family. That brings us, finally, to the third truth about the city:
Verse 7 reads very briefly, “Singers and dancers alike say, ‘All my springs are in you.’” Two main questions arise about this verse.
First, who are the singers and dancers? The mention of singers and dancers suggests some kind of festive procession. In fact, we have a record of the very first festive procession into the city in 2 Samuel 6, when David had the ark brought into Jerusalem amid great celebration. In fact, on that occasion David was so jubilant in his celebration that he threw off his outer garment in public, much to the chagrin of his wife. That kind of festive procession into the holy city appears to have been echoed in the regular observance of holy feasts in Jerusalem, as worshipers from all over the nation would make their way to the holy city. The “songs of ascents” (psalms 120-134) were sung at these times. Psalm 122, for example, reads, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’ Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem! Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.”
The second question to ask about verse 7 is, what do these singers and dancers mean when they say, “All my springs are in you”? Springs of water are symbols of life. The singers and dancers who make their way to Jerusalem celebrate the holy city as that which supplies them with life, richness, abundance, and blessing. A similar idea is present in Ezekiel 47, where Ezekiel sees a vision of a new temple in Jerusalem, a temple from which a river is flowing, bringing life and restoration to the whole of creation. And that image in turn is picked up in Revelation 22, where John sees the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God through the streets of the new Jerusalem, and on either side of the river is the tree of life, bearing fruit for the healing of the nations. Zion, the city of God’s delight, his holy dwelling place, is the source of life to its citizens. This is because Zion represents the presence of God among his people.
In the words of John Newton, whose hymn, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” is based on this psalm:
See, the streams of living waters, springing from eternal love, well supply thy sons and daughters, and all fear of want remove. Who can faint while such a river ever will their thirst assuage? Grace which like the Lord, the giver, never fails from age to age.
Have you ever heard it said of someone that he was so heavenly-minded that he was no earthly good? That kind of sentiment is typical of an age focused on the here and now. John Lennon’s song “Imagine” captures that sentiment well: Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people living for today. In John Lennon’s utopian vision, “living for today” rather than investing ourselves in a world to come is the key to world peace. In a rather Marxist fashion, Lennon imagined a day when “the world will live as one” when it has overcome the primitive superstitions of religion.
From what I can tell, the greatest threat to the well-being of this world is not that so many people are not “living for today.” It is that they are! People who live only for today are people who give no thought to a day of reckoning that is to come. They are people who have no sense of accountability to a higher authority, no sense that there will be a day of final separation between the righteous and wicked, no sense that an eternity of either life or death awaits. People who live only for today live in a universe that is amoral, that is, non-moral, because there ultimately is no right or wrong in that kind of world.
Many of you here are young, and you have so much to look forward to, so much to live for. But let this be a warning to you: do not become so invested in the things of this present age that you allow yourself to slip into “living for today.” Your hope is not in getting married or starting a family or earning a degree or building a career. Your hope is in Zion, the city of God, the mother of the redeemed from all nations, the spring of life to all who thirst. Show me a multitude of the children of Zion whose hope is anchored in the age to come, and I will show you an army of fearless warriors eager to give up their rights in order to stoop down and serve others in humility, a multitude ready to lay down their lives to take the gospel to the nations. Those who are most heavenly-minded are those who do the most earthly good.
Do you belong to the new Jerusalem? Before you answer that, let me remind you of what Revelation 21:27 says about the city: “But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” There is no sin in the Jerusalem above. It is a perfect city. Are you a perfect person? I didn’t think so. And if that’s the case, what would happen to the heavenly city if you, just as you are, were allowed to enter it? It would no longer be perfect. Your sin, your selfishness, your corruption, would begin the process of turning Heaven into Hell. That’s the bad news. But the good news is this: You are surrounded by a multitude of sinful people who, nevertheless, have been forgiven of their sins, have been declared righteous before God, and have been destined for eternal life in city of Zion. How has this happened? It has happened because God, in his love, sent his Son Jesus Christ to live a life free from sin, and yet to die the death of a sinner under the wrath of God. He did not die for his own sins, for he had none, but he died in the place of all who would believe in him. Having died to pay for our sins, he was raised from the dead on the third day and exalted to the right hand of the Father, so that all who come to him in faith may join him on the day of resurrection, when we will be free from sin forever and fit to enter the new Jerusalem. Christ invites you to come to him to receive this inheritance as well. Call out to him in faith for the forgiveness of your sins, and declare your identification with Christ through baptism. And when you do, we will celebrate together and say, “This one was born in Zion!”
If you are a believer in good standing with a local church, we invite you to come to the Lord’s table now to remember the death of Christ that has made you a citizen of Zion. But we also come to look forward to the day when this meal will pass away, because the reality to which it points will come to pass, and we will eat with Jesus in the new Jerusalem, the place where our self-sufficient, transcendent, majestic God will be God with us and for us forever. Children of Zion, can you taste that day even now?