I ask you to turn with me tonight in the Word of God to Psalm 87. As you're turning there, I might just give a quick account of our text this evening. On Thursday evening, I emailed our dear brother Nico with another Psalm text, and he said, Reverend Walker just preached on that last Lord's Day. Hint, hint. So, I appreciated the candor, and well, we chose another psalm. I trust that the word of God will be encouraging tonight to us as we hear this word from the Lord. I'm gonna ask you to stand with me now out of respect for the reading of God's holy, infallible, inspired, and inerrant word. His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Say, Lo, I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me. Behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Ethiopia, this man was born there. And of Zion it shall be said, this and that man was born in her, and the highest himself will establish her. The Lord shall count when he writeth up the people that this man was born there. Selah. As well the singers as the players on the instruments shall be there. All my springs of joy are in thee. Great God and Heavenly Father, we claim now that wonderful promise given from the Apostle to his understudy and co-laborer Timothy, that as we reflect upon these things, that is your holy, infallible, and inspired Word, you will grant us understanding in all things. Be our teacher and guide now through the Spirit of God, we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Within roughly the space of about five minutes recently, I encountered two articles in my newsfeed which I found utterly dispiriting. The first article was about special instruction in diversity and inclusive language at the United States Air Force Academy that the cadre were to use when speaking to the cadets They were to be sensitive. They were to address those as caregivers, who are mothers and fathers. They were to address those who had boyfriends and girlfriends as having partners. And they were to address the guys, the troops, as the team. And the point of it all, the reason given for this inclusiveness was the thought was that it would enhance a sense of an inclusion and thereby make them better warfighters. You see, the reason is as farcical as the policy. Then I encountered another article of a father of seven whose home was recently raided by 25 to 30 SWAT personnel from the Department of Justice because he had blocked entrance to an abortuary and the charge was that he had shoved a gentleman who was speaking profanities and gross words to his 12-year-old son who happened to be there as a witness with him to those who were coming to the facility. I could keep going with stories like this. It seems they're all over the headlines these days, and what stories like this do, at least to me, is they dispirit and discourage. You see, they are an index of the sign of the times in which we live, and often I get deeply discouraged by what I see. That is the context of Psalm 87. That is the context of Psalm 87. They feel utterly dejected. It's critically important to understand this portion of the context, even as Calvin says, attention to the time when this psalm was composed will contribute in no small degree to a clear understanding of its contents. And so Calvin says, if you understand the meaning and the force of this psalm, you must understand its context. There are two items here in our text tonight that give us some sense of how to enter into the context. And the first item is this word foundations. And then the second item is the repetition of the word Zion. that helps us begin to form a perspective on why this psalm was written. And that word foundations, of course, refers to the foundations of the temple. And then that, of course, points us to a particular time in history, which would have been the late 6th century and the rebuilding of the temple after the Babylonian exile. And as we read about that portion of time in the history of the church, we know that that historical moment was full of grief and sorrow. The Old Testament books tell us about this era that the people of God groaned. Because based upon promise and prophecy, as they looked down that dark tunnel of the Babylonian captivity, they were given hope by the Word of God that at the end of that tunnel was the bright light of hope and blessing and prosperity for the church. But upon their return, they encountered anything but blessing. They experienced a fractured church, the throne of David lie in ruin, and the people of God experience constant distress at the hands of their local enemies. And to top it all off, well, this new temple couldn't hold a candle to Solomon's. And so instead of blessing, they felt despair. They were sick in heart due to deferment of their hope. So what Psalm 87 does is addresses this sense of soul weariness and heart sickness, and it proclaims to these people who are suffering and groaning under the circumstances of their context, the unwavering affection of God for his church. and for the blessed hope of the future work which God would do through it. Hence our title tonight, Love and Hope for Zion. Let's think about love. There's a testimony here of divine love, and that is a testimony for the Lord's love for Zion. It is expressed in His identification with the foundation of Zion, which is the temple. We find that in verse 1, His foundation is in the holy mountains. And obviously here, foundations is a reference to the foundation of this new rebuilt temple. And we get some sense of what this was about from Ezra 3.10, where we read, when the builders had laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord. Notice here, we have the same equation that we have here in Psalm 87.1. It's His foundation. It's not any foundation. It's the foundation of the temple of the Lord. And it's now been rebuilt. And as it was rebuilt, the priest stood in holy array and all of their apparel, and they offer praise and song with praise and adulation. As they began to raise the foundations of this new house of the Lord. But the connection to our context comes if we would just read a little bit further in Ezra chapter 3, because in verse 12 we begin to read of the dejection of the spirit of the people of God when it says, When the priests and the Levites and the heads of the fathers' households, the old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, while many shouted loud for joy, so the people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people. You see, here is the condition of the people of God, assaulted at every side. They're in the midst of social and theological turbulence, and they set their sights upon this temple, and they look upon it, and they're brokenhearted, because it doesn't bear any of the former glory of Zion. That's the point of entry into our text now, when we see God hold before these people reason for encouragement. He says His foundation is in the holy mountains. You see, the psalmist here, in the Spirit of God, plucks up that which is symbolical and central, this foundation of the temple, and he connects it to the holy mountains, and he proclaims to them the message of divine love. Because the reason the mountains are holy is because God has consecrated it with the holiness of his presence. You see, the reason why the people of God are not to be dejected is because the things which they can't see with the physical eye are the things that really matter. You see, Zion's shimmer and sparkle was not its vertical dimensions or external glamor or the multitude of worshipers who gathered there. What made Zion glorious was the divine determination to dwell in the midst of the people of God and consecrate it with the presence of His holiness. And so the first line of encouragement to the struggling and distracted and dispirited people of God was don't evaluate everything by what you see with your physical eye. Don't evaluate the meagerness of the small beginnings of this temple foundation by with what you see with your eyes, but evaluate it with the declaration of God's truth. He has consecrated this as the place of his dwelling. The second thing that the psalmist says here is now he moves on from that to make a declaration. This is a very special declaration of the Lord's love in verse 2, where he says, The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than the dwelling places of Jacob. Notice the declaration of greater love here. The word for love means a deep affection based upon close relationship. And the verb here for love is a present active participle, which means it's an enduring love, a constant love, and habitual and perpetual overflowing affection for the people and the place of Zion. Notice here there's a comparison in the middle of our verse. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than the dwellings of Jacob. Notice here what God loves less, if we could put it that way. What God loves less was the covenantal families and tribes and the territories of the land. And that in no way is meant to diminish them. God loves his people. God loves the family. He has ordained and instituted it from the beginning. But what God loved more was the collective of the people of God as they gathered now in Zion. And there's a very specific declaration of love here. The gates. The gates. Ordinarily, in the Old Testament, we encounter the gates. We remember that the gates were the center and the hub of commerce. They were the town square, if you will. They were the place where the people met and pursued commerce and prosecuted suit, and they gathered together to pass the news of the day. But when the psalmist here speaks of the gates, I think he speaks far more narrowly here as it's related to this foundation where the Lord dwells. The gates here is representative of the way and the means of access to meet with God in his worship. And so by extension then, what is the psalmist speaking of? By extension, what the psalmist is speaking of is the gathered church of all of the tribes throughout the whole city, or the whole country of Israel, as they gather together at the place on the house of God for worship, where they proclaim his praises and he mediates the grace of Christ to them. You see, what God is proclaiming to his people is though it looks meager to the eye, it's glorious because of the promise, because of the divine appointment, because of the spiritual reality which prevails here, that those gates represent the house of God and the people of God gathered together to call upon his name and worship, and he declares his special love for that. You see, one more indication of love here, people of God, tonight, and that's in verse three. Words of approbation regarding Zion speak of God's love for it. And those words of approbation are bound up in the phrase, glorious things are spoken. Glorious things are spoken and a little bit of an inside conversation or debate here about the glorious things is what precisely is its content. There are some godly sound commentators who argue that the content of the glorious things is that which is proclaimed in verse 4 by way of promise and prophecy of the Lord expanding the church to the nations and hauling the nations into the church to become its members. And so in a sense, some would say the glorious thing spoken of Zion is the promise that God is going to raise up a multinational church by the sovereignty of his power and of his grace. Okay. And then there are others who look at the tense of the verb where it says they have been spoken. They say, no, no, it must be something else that's already been written. And so then naturally, the mind would go to passages like Isaiah chapter two, which speak about the nation streaming to the house of the Lord and the peoples of the nation saying, let's go up to the house of the mountain of the Lord, and that the law of God would go forth from Zion. And the result of it would be massive societal transformation through the hammering their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. You decide for yourself tonight. I don't think they're very different. Ultimately, I think they're intertwined. Because what else is Psalm 87 saying here in the multinational expansion of the church of the sovereignty and the administration of grace will prevail? The church of Jesus Christ will spread throughout the earth. It's pretty hard to see it. as these poor returned exiles were kicking rocks around Jerusalem and noticing that the gates were burned with fire and that the monumental walls were crumbled. As Nehemiah says, you can't restore the glory of the stones and the dust. From their perspective, it was so hard to see. But you see, that's the point of the psalm tonight, people of God. Calvin, as he looks at this, says there's a purpose to this language, and the purpose of the language is to admonish the people of God to not evaluate their experiences through common sense and reason, but through the word of God. Listen to how he puts it. Attention is called away from the present aspect of things and directed to the promises which inspired them with hope of the wonderful glory with which she would be adorned. Although nothing appeared to the eye of sense and reason, yet the prophet would have them encouraged by the word of God to stand. You see, the point of speaking of the glorious of things that had been spoken about Zion was to take the people of God away from perceiving with their senses and to go back to the word of God and to interpret them in light of the truth of scripture. so their hearts would not fail, so they wouldn't be consumed with sorrow and despair. Ever feel that way? Nothing appeared to the eye of sense and reason that gives you hope? You see, sometimes reaching for hope feels like grasping at vapors. while at the same time the reasons for sorrow and dejection and hopelessness and soul sickness feels as firm as the ground planted under your feet. And this is the perennial problem of the church and the believer in every age until Christ comes. The devil and the world and the flesh are sworn enemies and they work overtime for our discouragement. But people of God, tonight Psalm 87 addresses you. Maybe you're not discouraged and if you're not, you can tuck this away, tell a friend or somebody who needs it at another time. We don't interpret with common sense and reason, but with the promise of the power of the word of God. There's one other nugget in here we take for our application before we move on to think of the hope of Zion. And well, that is the powerful proclamation of the love of God for his church. You see, What this son of Korah was inspired to proclaim was a message of love to a people who had become so weary and discouraged. And they had been so busy interpreting their experiences in light of everything that they saw around them that was going wrong that they begin to wonder out loud, where is the love of God? And one of the things that the psalmist does so powerfully through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is add line upon line upon line upon line for us tonight of testimony about this special love of God in Christ for us. And if we would fan out here from the rest of scripture, we could think of the wonderful depths and dimensions and marvel of this love of God, that it is a free love, it is a gracious love, it is expensive love, it is a blood-soaked love, it is a sovereign love, it's an unfailing love, it's a jealous love, it's a protecting love, it's a providing love. And the list goes on and on of the wonderfulness of the dimensions of the love of God in Christ for us. But how about what makes it all so electrifying? How about what makes it so electrifying and powerful to us? Which is its root? And the root that I'm thinking of tonight, people of God, is contained in that verse that you learned on your mama's knee. For God so loved the world. B.B. Warfield makes a classic statement here when he said, the world is so bad that it takes a great kind of love to love it at all. Oh, how we ever need to be mindful of that great truth. We were so bad that it took a great kind of love to love us at all. God didn't need us. We were not compelling or attractive. We had nothing to offer him but our sinful and dark and corrupt and depraved hearts. And yet, what does the word of God tell you? In love, he predestined. People of God, no matter what your circumstances of sorrow or dejection, today you are entitled to the deepest sense of encouragement from the proclamation of our verses here. The Lord loves the gates of Zion, the Lord loves his church, and the Lord loves you. This is love of God and Christ for his church. And we think now about the hope of God and the hope of Zion. And we see it spelled out now beginning in verse 4 here, as the psalmist says, I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia, this man was born there. And what begins to emerge in our thinking as we look at the table of nations here is the expansiveness of the gathering of the church here when we see the names Rahab and Babylon and Philistia and Tyre and Ethiopia, we begin to think about them and map them out with so many coordinates as it were, you begin to realize that they form at least the four points of the compass. Nohab being Egypt, Babylon being the Middle East, Philistia being the southwestern coast of Palestine, Tyre being the northwestern part of that same place, and Ethiopia likely here is represented by the name Kush, which could be East Africa, but could also just as well be in Heru, the entire continent of Africa. But the one thing that you can't help but miss here is the expansiveness of the perspective Imagine how this must have landed upon the ears of people who lived in the fishbowl of Jerusalem to consider that the church of Jesus Christ would expand to the nations. And so what the psalmist exalts in is a multinational, ethnically diverse church where the people of God are united as one. And the marvel of it all is those whom he includes, nations which were sworn enemies of Jesus Christ. Calvin puts it like this, it's therefore said that those who formerly were deadly enemies shall not only become familiar friends, but engrafted into one body. What a glorious distinction of the church that even those who held her in contempt shall come flocking to her from every quarter. The unthinkable marvel of Psalm 87, 4 is that the enemies of the church became the members of the church. Glorious things indeed are spoken of Zion. And we take from the very nature of the people and grafted the sworn enemies of the church the means by which it was accomplished. which is the sovereignty of God and His grace, which is accented again and again and again in verse four and in verse five and in verse six. In the summation, this one is born there. You see, what the psalmist is proclaiming is the expansiveness of the church. The growth into a multinational organization would not be the work of men. It would be the sovereignty of God at work through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of grace through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit who makes dead people alive by grace. And so the psalmist here is celebrating something which is far beyond the scope and power of feeble men to accomplish. That, people of God, intersects with our concerns tonight for being dejected and so weary over all that we see happening around us. As we look upon the world, steeped as it is in all of its idolatry, its gross intellectual confusion, its servitude of false religion, its being clutched in the grip of the vanity of materialism, our hearts despair. A great joy of mine recently has been to come back to this church and worship after not having been here for well over 25 years and see these pews full and the people teeming and the children running around the building and see this church prospering. But you know, sometimes we don't always see this hand of God at work in other places and we begin to wonder, will God ever empower his promises and make them effectual. Will the psalmist encourage us tonight that all of the things that we see around us, the degradation, the corruption, the wholesale perversion, the triumph of the enemies will come to an end. And we pray that those enemies will be turned into members of the body of Christ by the power of the sovereign administration of grace. We don't have to despair people of God because Christ is on the throne. I speak weekly with a lady who's advanced in years and is steadily progressing towards her deathbed. And it takes nearly an hour every Friday afternoon for her to bear her soul of the bitterness, anger, malice, and confusion she feels by everything that she sees going on in the world around her. The lamentation of a world and experience which she knew which has passed and living in a place she no longer understands. and confronting that without any sense of hope. People of God, that is not us. We may become dejected moment by moment and dispirited time to time, or like me, sometimes every five minutes. But then we look back to the word of God and to its promises and what we find is that God is in control and his truth is marching forward. And so the psalmist here testifies to the sovereign expansion of the church by grace and then adds one more thing here for our encouragement, which is its sovereign preservation. Look at verse five. We need to connect both aspects of this verse together because at the outset of verse 5 we receive a reaffirmation of the promise of the sovereign expansion of church by the administration of divine grace. As it says, and of Zion it shall be said this and that were born of her. But I want you to notice the conjunction and in the middle of the verse. Because here the psalmist says, and the highest himself will establish her. You see, and the point of that conjunction is to bring both of these realities together, both of these testimonies together, and lay them side by side to reinforce us and to encourage us, and to testify to us that not only is God working sovereignly to expand and to gather His church onto the ends of the earth, but at the same time and simultaneously, He is sovereignly working to preserve it in grace. I just love this word established. It is a bold and powerful verb in Hebrew, and it means to make solid. You see, and the encouragement we have is that the Lord not only promises to sovereignly gather us and to scoop us up out of the gutter of life and to wash away our sins, but then to plant us firmly in Christ and keep us there. The promise is that all those who come to him by faith will in no wise be cast out. And the confirmation that the psalmist reaches for is the title most high. Notice here as the psalmist sweeps out the consolation of the church, the highest himself And the Hebrew word there is Elyon which refers to divine supremacy and power and unmatched might. And he draws upon all of that and he applies it to us this evening and says the same God who saves you is the same God who sanctifies you and is the very same God who will preserve you. The more we reflect on that and think about it in light of the totality of scripture, I just cannot help but hear the voice of Christ. My sheep, John 10, 27, hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. What could be more soul encouraging than this double cupping of the divine hand upon our life? It would be enough if Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. And I hold them in the palm of my hand and nothing shall pluck them out. And no one is able and powerful enough to pry them away. I would be good. Because I remember that that self-same Christ is the one who declares to his church that all power and authority has been given to me. But then he adds this deeply consoling second testimony. My father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. Are you struggling with sin tonight? Have you perceived its power and danger, its consequences? Have you ever been so bothered by sin that you're afraid you could lose your salvation? Well, Jesus says, it's an impossibility because the Father who has given you to the Son has you clutched. You have hope tonight that your own sins won't divide you from the love of God, which is in Christ. I got to thinking about all these things and a verse came to mind. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? The word of the Lord is unfailing. And what he proclaims to you tonight is the sovereignty and immutability of his love and the counsel of his will, which is the hope for the church that he will build and keep us until the end. And where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us with this little band of worshipers in verse seven. The singers as the players on instruments shall be there. And they sing, all my springs are in thee. People have got every testimony to God's administration of sovereign and saving grace is a call to worship. Have you been regenerated? Sing. Have your foul sins been washed? And the crimson red blood of Christ shed on the cross? You're to give praise. Are you being preserved in grace? And the psalmist says you're to give thanks. And so tonight, if you've come here with a heart full of dejection and you feel yourself drowning in despair, with bitterness and malice and concern, your life is characterized by a hand wringing over each and every one of the latest headlines. God doesn't condemn you. He just tells you to take your focus off the things which you can see. and turn them to his word of promise and remind yourself of God's unfailing love and the overflow of his constant mercies to you. And as you begin to contemplate that and to think about that and to savor it, here's what it'll do. It'll lead you to seeing all my springs of joy are in thee. And when our hearts are tuned to sing about our springs of joy in Christ, we can be sure the dejection and despair will melt away, and we will be able to say, it is well with our soul. Father, we thank you tonight for the word of encouragement, hope, and promise that comes from your word. We thank you that your word and your truth is unfailing and that in mercy you have addressed it to us to build us up, to edify us, to fortify our minds with truth, to stabilize our weary soul and to refresh it with the nourishment of your eternal and powerful and sufficient and inspired word. So that having heard these things, not only will our souls be refreshed and our hearts and mouths sing, but now God, make us strong to go forth to serve Jesus Christ in the week ahead. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen.