Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Psalm 87

Sermon text today is Psalm 87. Psalm 87. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. This will be our fourth and concluding sermon in this series on the tabernacle of David or Zion worship. Psalm 87. A psalm of the sons of Korah. A song. His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, oh city of God, Selah. I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to those who know me.

Behold, O Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia, this one was born there, and of Zion it will be said, this one and that one were born in her, and the most high himself shall establish her. The Lord will record when he registers the peoples, this one was born there. Selah, both the singers and the players on instruments say, “All my springs are in you.” Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your most holy word.

We thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit that takes this word and makes it comprehensible to us and more than that causes our hearts to delight in it. Open now, Lord God, ears that would otherwise be utterly closed to your word. By the strength and power of your Holy Spirit and by his beauty, teach this word to us now in ways that we cannot comprehend. But ways that we’ll find this word demonstrated as we walk in obedience to it and in joyful praise of you all the rest of our lives.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated. We continue with our fourth and final sermon on this series on the tabernacle of David. I’ve been building a summary statement at the top of these outlines. So, I’ll simply go through that to begin our sermon today.

Tabernacle of David worship refers to the worship that David instituted in a tabernacle, which is a tent on Mount Zion, a specific location in what would become the city of Jerusalem.

Tabernacle of David worship was a transition step between tabernacle and temple worship. By tabernacle here, we mean the tabernacle produced by way of design from God’s holy mountain. The tabernacle that went with the people, a traveling temple so to speak and this tabernacle of David is in between the transition from tabernacle to temple worship. We can refer to it as Zion worship because that is the place where the tabernacle of David was set up.

Zion worship began with the advent of the ark to Mount Zion in Jerusalem. A foreshadowing of the advent and ascension of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit. Remember the Spirit comes forth and produces music and singing. It was distinct from tabernacle sacrifices at Gibeon, outside of Jerusalem and later temple worship at Mount Moriah, another mount in Jerusalem. It was however integrated into temple worship in a very significant way.

We’ll look at that in just a moment in a little more detail. After its initiation, Zion worship was bloodless. It involved music and song. It occurred in the direct presence of the Ark, no veil separating the covenant people from the Ark of the Covenant, with no veil separating the covenant of the ark of the covenant from the people who worship in an undivided worship environment. No different courts for Jews and Gentiles. So Jews and Gentile God-fearers are brought together.

All this, of course, is a picture of New Testament worship to come at the coming and ascension of the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Zion worship, we looked at the subject of that psalm of Zion recorded in 1 Chronicles 16. And we said that Zion worship involved commemoration, thanksgiving, and praise with thanksgiving being the sum of all three. He wrote a psalm to give thanks to God. It memorialized the past and the first half of that psalm in 1 Chronicles 16 is taken from or becomes later Psalm 106.

It memorializes the past and looks forward to the future with great hope. Psalm 96, all the nations will be converted and brought to the hill of God to worship and thus produce thanksgiving in the present. Zion worship involved diverse instruments, different kinds of instruments. It was sweetly composed. It had symmetry, proportion, and beauty and as a result power to move people. Sweetly composed and courageously, enthusiastically, and skillfully performed.

Zion worship equips the army of God as a joyful community and thus transforms the world. And it’ll be this last part that we’re going to stress as we get through Psalm 87 and particularly the final verses of Psalm 87.

We said that in Acts 15:16, the times of the New Testament are described as rebuilding the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down. I’ll rebuild its ruins, God said, and I will set it up.

And verse 17 of Acts 15 says, “So that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord God who does all these things.” See, the gospel has come, the coming of Christ, and as a result of that gospel, the good news is that the Gentiles shall be brought in and all the world now brought into the tabernacle of David to give praise to God. Our mission is to call people to the worship of God.

And we’re sent forth with that mission into the world at the end of worship. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God will shine forth. My theme last week and this week is a picture of the fiery stream that issues from the throne of God. We go into the throne of God in worship and we are his fiery stream. We are the beauty of God. We are the light of God as we go forth from this place to transform the world.

Psalm 80 says, “Give, oh shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like the flock, you who dwell between the cherubim, shine forth. Stir up your strength. Come and save us. Rescue us, oh God. Cause your face to shine. We shall be saved.” God shines forth from his holy mountain, saving and delivering his people and producing a transformed world.

Tabernacle of David refers to worship at a tent. A tabernacle is a tent. David’s tabernacle for worship was at Mount Zion, Zion. And we read there that God is the God of hosts. This is in several places in the scriptures. God is the God of armies. And we said last week that we are this joyful singing army of God constituted together in the context of the worship here in the Lord’s day.

The Psalms, the praises of David, the Songs of Zion, so to speak, have been for 2,000 years the songs that were in the mouths of those that went forth in necessary defensive warfare against those who would persecute and kill the Christian church. Perhaps no better illustration of that can be found than the Huguenots. We had several years ago a Reformation party was a celebration and a learning about the Huguenots, the Calvinists in France during the time of the Reformation, tremendously persecuted, had to flee in many places, including America.

The Huguenots would when necessarily attacked, they would go into battle singing the Psalms. The Psalms were really their life. Psalms were how they brought people together into worship services, sometimes secret worship services. They would go around and sing a psalm to call people to worship in a hidden fashion. They would read the Psalms of God would be in their households. Psalters were made in little print so that when they were found and when they were tortured, whatever, they could hide the Psalter somewhere in their clothing which was their bulwark their strength before their persecutors. The Psalms that they would sing. Children were taught to memorize the Psalter and as I said in many battles the record is as they would go into battle singing the Psalms as they went to battle. Those who would kill them, persecute them and torture them, the enemy knew what this was all about. If they found Psalters they would burn them or they would take the pages of the Psalter, shove them into the wombs of those that they were torturing and killing as a way to kind of rub it in their face, so to speak.

The Huguenots were a picture to us of the army of God in very difficult trying times and yet an army who though persecuted and greatly troubled, still sang God’s praises, whether they were at home in their private devotions, whether they were going on their way to work and their tasks, whether they were engaging in necessary battle with the enemies of God, the Psalms, the songs of Zion, so to speak.

The Psalter that David wrote first and foremost for use in Zion worship. This was their joy and their privilege. So it is ours as well. The Psalter is a very important book for us as we seek to see ourselves as the army of God. We are not an army that consists ultimately in physical weapons. We’re an army that our weapons are the very words that we sing from God’s scriptures and words based upon those same scriptures.

Now I want to talk a little bit before we look at Psalm 87 about different uses of the term Zion. I mentioned this last week. Zion was originally the home of the Jebusites. And you know, it isn’t even mentioned in the Pentateuch, this particular ridge in what would later become Jerusalem. But it was the original encampment that probably for at least 400 years before David took it was a substantial city, kind of a capital citadel city of the Jebusites.

And so Zion originally was this mountaintop. We don’t know what the word Zion means exactly. It seems like it means a defendable place, citadel, tower. Some people think it might mean sort of dry, but really one of the reasons why Zion was so important was because of the springs that were there. Hezekiah later produced a system of watering from Mount Zion down to the pool of Siloam. Remember the pool of Siloam where you remember that we’re the sent ones for God with the water of God going into the earth.

So it probably doesn’t mean parched. It probably means defendable or tower or set up. And originally this was, as I said, a city of the Jebusites and the scriptures record that David conquered this city of the Jebusites. This is in 2 Samuel 5:6-9. “The king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion. The same is the city of David. So, it was called the city of David and its original reference that meant this particular mountaintop where the Jebusites originally were this hill on a plane of a ridge that would be later Jerusalem.

And so this is called the city of David. And David dwelt in the stronghold and called it the city of David. So Zion was this place separate from Mount Moriah where the temple would be built yet in the same basic vicinity. In Isaiah 8:18, we read that Yahweh of hosts dwells in Mount Zion. So again, Yahweh, the king of armies, dwelt in the context of Zion. And so after David conquered this city and after his reign as there for a while.

He brings up the ark to this physical location that once was the place where the Jebusites were and they enter into this tabernacle of David worship.

Now the third way the term is used in the scriptures is for later temple worship. When we read Mount Zion later become Zion becomes a catch word not just for this hill apart from where this hill rather where mount Zion literally was but it becomes now the name given to Mount Moriah where the temple was.

Remember that Solomon takes the ark, brings it to the temple. And what we said when he does that, he really brings Zion worship into temple worship. So much so that the temple worship is later referred to as Zion. And so in parallelism in different places in scripture, Zion is referred to referring to the temple worship. So the temple worship is characterized ultimately by this tabernacle of David or Zion worship that he had established.

Turn to 2 Chronicles 29. Together and we’ll look at an interesting illustration of how this worked. 2 Chronicles 29, we read of Hezekiah setting up the worship. This is at the temple, of course, on Mount Moriah. Then it talks about the bulls that they brought and they’re doing sacrifices and stuff. And verse 23, they brought out the male goats for the sin offering before the king. This is 2 Chronicles 29.

“They laid their hands on them and the priest killed them. This is the sin offering. The sin offering was the purification offering to purify the worship environment. It correlates to our confession of sin and the assurance of forgiveness. Sin purification offering. And the priest killed them and they presented their blood on the altar as a sin offering to make an atonement for all Israel. For the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering be made for all Israel.”

The burnt offering is the ascension offering. So there’s two offerings. First the sin offering, confession of sin in our worship service. Then the ascension into heaven. We hear God’s word and consecrate ourselves to his purposes. That’s the burnt offering.

“Verse 25, he stationed the Levites in the house of the Lord with cymbals, with stringed instruments, with harps, according to the commandment of David, of Gad the king’s seer, and of Nathan the prophet. For thus was the commandment of the Lord by his prophets. The Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets.”

Remember, we said that there’s three kinds of instruments, percussion, and then stringed instruments and wind instruments. The priests blow the trumpets. There’s a sense in which the trumpets are the foundational instrument. The trumpets come first in the history of God’s people.

Remember in Numbers, the trumpets summon God’s people to warfare, their legislative assemblies or to worship. So the priests blow the trumpets to summon God’s people. When they went out before this in the Pentateuch, when they go up to receive the law of God, they hear a trumpet sounding from the mountain. So the trumpet is kind of the preeminent instrument. And there’s a separation here between the priests who blow the trumpets and then the other Levites who do the other sorts of instruments.

So that’s an interesting detail of how this worship happens.

“Then Hezekiah commanded them to offer the burnt offering on the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord also began with the trumpets and with the instruments of David, king of Israel. So all the assembly worshiped, the singers sang, the trumpeters sounded. All this continued until the burnt offering was finished. and they’d finished offering the king and all who were present with them bowed and worshiped.”

Okay. So what happens here during the sin offering there is no music going on in terms of the flow of the offerings in the tabernacle. You had sin offering and ascension offering and peace offering. So here in our worship service we’ve talked that worship is founded upon this movement of the three offerings. Purification of sin offering ascension in response to the word. God brings us into heaven. We ascend and hear his word and then he gives us the peace offering that we share with our families, with our friends.

And this process happened before music came. When music comes, it doesn’t come to the sin offering part of the service here. The music begins, the song of the Lord begins at the ascension portion of the progression of the offerings. That’s why, you know, we do the call to worship, we confess our sins, we’re assured of our forgiveness of our sins, and then really the song of the Lord begins in this church.

So this is an example, an inspired example of how the song of the Lord produced by David at Zion worship was integrated into the basic pattern of offerings that was produced in the tabernacle and later be practiced in the temple. You see, it’s integrated in and so temple worship is Zion worship and it’s Zion worship that understands the significance of the different offerings and uses music appropriate to the particular phase of the worship service going on.

And so if we’re going to do Songs of Zion skillfully, we want to follow this inspired pattern. And we want to think that the way to apply it is to think through the progression of songs in the context of worship as we think through the progression of the movement of the offerings. All picturing the once-for-all offering of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago for sinners.

So this is an example. Zion is used first of the Jebusite city. Second of the tabernacle, the mountain where David pitched the tabernacle, and then third it becomes now a generalized term for temple worship because temple worship is now Zion worship. You see Zion worship and the tabernacle of David is brought into that and so it occurs. Fourth, the term is later used in the scriptures for all of Jerusalem. We’ve got one city couple of mountains on it or hills and it becomes Zion can be used and is used later for Jerusalem itself the capital city.

And in fact the term also can be used for the whole country all of the people of God and the place where they live is also referred to in the prophets later in the prophets as Zion. And then finally, the word Zion refers to God’s future acts of deliverance for his people. That’s where he does his stuff. That’s where his great future deeds will occur is in the context of Zion. Zion, remember, is in Ezekiel, it’s called the navel of the earth.

It’s the center of the earth. From it, God will accomplish all his saving purposes for all the world. So Zion can mean this old city, the hill that David took, the place where David set up Zion worship, transferred over to the temple. All of Jerusalem is referred to as Zion. All of the people in the nation are referred to as Zion. And ultimately the whole world becomes Zion because Zion is the starting place for the kingdom of God that flows into all the world.

As we see at the end of Psalm 87, all my springs are from her. Psalm 87 begins at the establishment of Zion by God. And it ends with springs. Our springs are in her. As we flow out, Zion flows out to fill the world. And so Zion has this comprehensive aspect in terms of how it’s used in the scriptures. Or the daughters of Zion are referred to as the people. Zion is the country. Zion is the central location of God.

And ultimately all of this is because God dwells in Zion. In Isaiah 51:3, we read, “The Lord shall come comfort Zion. He will comfort all her waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein. Thanksgiving in the voice of melody.”

So Zion is restored Eden. We start in the garden. We move to a city. We start in Genesis in the garden. We move in the end of the book of Revelation to the city. And so Zion now is like the Garden of Eden, but it’s more mature and it now grows to fill all the world. So Zion has these various references to it. They all of course indicate the presence of God with his people.

Zion is the navel of the earth. Zion was originally the city of the Jebusites. Zion is also referred to as the city of David. And so it means all things in terms of God’s working with his people. Mount Moriah where the temple was is later called Zion. The priests blew the trumpets. The Levites played the other instruments. The music in the tabernacle begins with the ascension offering or burnt offering, not with the sin offering. So, it has a specific place and the progression of worship as God gives it to us.

Zion also becomes a name that is used to refer to Jerusalem, city of God is Zion. Zion is yours to refer to the whole nation and Zion is where God’s great future deeds would take place. All of these things are really relationship to Zion itself. So Zion has a multiplicity of terms but terms which we really cannot understand how they work themselves out having if we didn’t understand what happens at Zion worship in the tabernacle of David.

And so that helps us.

Okay. Now let’s turn to Psalm 87. And I broken it out into three sections. It breaks out very nicely into three verses, three verses and one last verse. A rather obvious structure to it. And verses 1 to 3 speak of the excellencies of Zion. This is now a psalm about this Zion. And so we read here of Zion and some important truths of it. And as I said, it has an important beginning and ending place.

It has a beginning place of God’s establishment. His foundations are in the mountains, the holy hills. But it flows out. There are springs found there that go out to fill all the world. So it begins by talking about the profundity of Zion. Profundity means under the deep things, the deepest of things, the underneath the bedrock, there is this establishment of Zion, the people of God. And we know, of course, that God is laid in Zion, the chief cornerstone.

The scriptures tell us that chief cornerstone is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The profundity of Zion is that Jesus Christ is her establishment. This verse, “his foundation is in the holy mountains.” One way to think of that is these first two words are sort of a declaration. His establishment, his foundation, he did this. In other words, okay, Zion worship is not established ultimately by David. What we do isn’t established by the elders of the church. God has established Zion. It is his work. His sovereignty is at the very beginning of this declaration of what Zion is. It is the result of God’s free choice to work in history the way he determines to work. He has established this these hills of holiness.

Another way to interpret the last half of verse one. So there’s a profundity to the foundations of God that results in hills of holiness. And so we’re called to enjoy and to rejoice in the music of Zion, but we’re called to shine forth in the beauty of holiness. God lays a precious cornerstone of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he calls us to understand this is the foundation of Zion. This is the profundity of all things that happen in the context of the world is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and men’s response to it. the church has this foundation that cannot be moved.

The implications of this is since God has established the underpinnings of all things, the navel of the world, the center of the world. He’s established the church. He’s established the worship of the church. It means that the people of God cannot be moved. It assures us that no matter what we go through, past, present, or future, no matter what difficulties, trials or tribulations apply to us, our foundation is established by God.

He sovereignly will keep us from all difficulties or through all difficulties. Better said, so ultimately we can look at everything as the Huguenots did, even the torture and tribulations that we go through from God’s perspective and find joy in the midst of what would otherwise be completely joyless times. The foundation and sovereignty of God means that he has established his church and it shall surely accomplish the purposes for which he has established it, which as we see is the blessing of all men.

Verse two tells us about the preeminence of Zion.

Now I think talking of the worship of God’s corporate community. Verse two, “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” Very important verse. Want to read a couple of comments on it. First by Matthew Henry and then by Charles Spurgeon.

Henry says this, “There he met his people and conversed with them, received their homage and showed them the tokens of his favor. And therefore, we may conclude how well he loves those particular gates.” He says, Matthew Henry draws out the implication of this. First, he says, “Note this, God has a love for the dwellings of Jacob. He has a gracious regard to religious families and accepts their family worship.”

So Henry sees in this verse a relationship of the worship of the church and the individual families that comprise the church. And Henry says that you know we must not think that God doesn’t love the tents of Jacob, the tents, the individual dwelling places of his people. We’re all the Israel of God. He loves families. He loves your family. He loves my family. He loves family worship that happens in the context of your homes day to day, week to week. He loves all of that.

So that’s the first implication of the verse Matthew Henry said. But number two, “yet he loves the gates of Zion better, not only better than any, but better than all of the dwellings of Jacob. God was worshiped in the dwellings of Jacob and family worship is a family duty which must by no means be neglected. Yet when they come in competition, public worship is to be preferred before private.”

Spurgeon said the same thing. Spurgeon says this, “The church which is the mystical Jerusalem is founded not on the sand of carnal policy nor in the mountains of nor in the morass of human kingdoms but on Jehovah’s Godhead. The church is called the chief of all his works. God delights in the prayers and praises of Christian families and individuals tents of Jacob. But Spurgeon says he has a special eye to the assemblies of the faithful. The great festivals or the crowds surrounded the temple gates were fair in the Lord’s eyes. And this should lead each separate believer to identify with the church of God where the Lord reveals his love the most.

And there should each believer most delight to be found.”

And so commentators for many years have seen in this particular verse, verse two, that God loves the gates of Zion more than all the tribes of Jacob. They see here the tremendous importance that God places upon corporate worship in Zion. God says there is a preeminence to corporate worship even over family worship. What did God love more? The gates of Zion, not the tents of Jacob, clearly the gates of Zion.

So there’s a profundity to Zion in her establishment. There’s a preeminence to her worship that happens in the context of Zion. And finally, there’s a gloriousness to it in verse three.

“Glorious things are spoken of you, oh city of God, Selah.”

And I think what this is saying is they’re going to go on now and make proclamation of what the glorious things are of Zion. There are many glorious things found in the church of Jesus Christ, but ultimately he’s going to focus here on a particular proclamation that is the glorious things that are spoken immediately in the context of Psalm 87 and the glorious things are summarized in verses 4 to 6 as the children of Zion who will comprise this mountain of God that grows and fills all the earth.

Well verse four says “I will make mention” and here the word can mean this is proclamation God says glorious things will be proclaimed of you and now God proclaims a most glorious truth of Zion that is pictured again in that tabernacle of David worship of an undivided sanctuary no veil before the ark etc.

Verse four: “I will make mention I will proclaim I have an oracle here of Rahab and Babylon to those who know me behold of Philistia entire with Ethiopia this one was born there.”

So here we have the nations of the world by way of designation of several terms talked about that will comprise Zion. So here we have this great truth that the gospel, the good news is that indeed Zion worship will encompass all nations.

Now what is this reference to Rahab? In Psalm 89:9 and 10? We read, “Thou rulest the raging of the sea. When the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.” He’s talking about the exodus and coming through the sea. Verse 10, “Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain. Thou hast scattered thine enemies with your strong arm.”

So clearly here and also in the book of Isaiah, for some reason, don’t know why, but for some reason, Egypt is referred to as Rahab. Clearly, he’s talking in Psalm 89 about the Exodus and the destruction of Egypt, the great old enemy of God’s people. And he describes Egypt by using the term Rahab both here in Psalm 89 as well as in several references in the book of Isaiah 51:9 and 30:7. So, Rahab here is a picture of Egypt.

And then secondly, Babylon is the second nation that’s brought together with Egypt. And these are the two great enemy nations at the time of the writing of the psalter as they actually not the writing of the psalter but the composition of these later on. The two great pagan nations that were devastating to God’s people and were their great enemies were Egypt and then Babylon. Babylon would probably encompass Assyria. Later after David, the people of God are taken into captivity to Assyria and Babylon.

So these are the two great enemies of God’s people. And this psalm says that God indeed will eventually convert Egypt and he’ll convert Babylon. Egypt and Babylon will be numbered with the hosts of those nations that come up to worship at Zion. Just like we sang today from Isaiah and Micah that to this mountaintop all the nations will come.

Philistia. Philistia is the great enemy that was not eliminated from the promised land as they went in. They didn’t drive out all the Philistines. So the enemies that exist in the context of the people even they will come and worship at the mountain of God. Tyre the richness of pagan nations is pictured by Tyre and then finally Ethiopia the far away regions even will come and worship the great old enemies the existing enemies of the future of the present and then the furthest reaches of the world.

The glorious thing that’s spoken of Zion, the glorious thing that we rejoice in every Lord’s day, the core of the gospel is that because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ all the world will be brought into the worship of God.

We have a mission to take this message into the world and it will be effectual for converting men and nations. And so there is the children of Zion include all the nations of the world.

But verse 5 tells us that it’s not just nations corporate groups that are referred to but individuals as well.

“And of Zion it will be said this one and that one were born in her and the Most High himself shall establish her.”

And so here we have the idea that Zion becomes the nursery so to speak of all the culture but it talks about them now as individuals. First it talks about them as the group nations. Now it talks about this and that one this and that individual being birthed in the context of Zion.

Paul in Galatians 4:26 that the Jerusalem above is our heavenly mother. It’s the mother of the church. And Zion is here pictured in this verse as the mother of many children. And these children can be identified as nations corporately or they can be identified as this and that person as well.

So here we move from a thinking of the consideration of the unity of the church bound together in worship to now the diversity of each and every one of you. You’re not here as part of a faceless mass, the army of God in that sense. You’re here as an individual as well as part of the nation of God’s people.

And God will send you out tomorrow as individuals to accomplish things for him. The worship of the church forms the basis for the individual actions that we do in the context of our world. We have worship at church. You’re supposed to take that worship picture and begin to develop worship in the context of your home.

You know, at the beginning of the worship day, what do we do? We call in the nations. At the end of the worship day, what do we do? We send God sends us out with a mission to call in the nations. Now, when the nations come in, when the people in Oregon City come here, we’re to come bringing tithe and gifts to God because what we’re doing is not simply worship. It’s equipping for transforming the world and for making the world beautiful and productive.

So we have a mission to go forth and call people back to worship, right? Well, in our family worship, when we start worship at the beginning of the day, we call our children together. We call our little world together. And then at the end of five or 10 minutes of family worship, we send them out into the world. They have a mission. They have a mission to go do and fulfill the work that God has called them to do. And they’re supposed to return the next morning or if you have family worship in the evening, they return in the evening and say how they’ve done. They present their work before God is represented in the context of family worship.

So our worship ends up in mission calling. Your family worship ends up in mission and calling. Our worship involves discipleship. We have the word of God and the singing of God’s people together. Right? We’re formed up in the context of singing and God’s word produces instruction in the context of our midst. We’re discipled not just by intellectual content, but we sing the scriptures of God and we add beauty to it that way and it forms us up.

So your little time of family worship tomorrow morning, you men representing the same thing that I represent and Elder Wilson represents in the church. You represent the elder, the old guy in the house. You call your flock together. You read a little bit of scripture. You sing a little bit of a song, chorus, or whatever it is. You see, you disciple your people and then you send them out in mission into the world.

And when you do that, you’ve created community in the context of your home. The very fact that you call them together and send them out is a daily reminder of the mission that the corporate worship service of God’s people prepares you for. The fact that you form together as a community pictures what we did on Lord’s Day worship service and we formed up the spirit brought us together as the community of Christ and you form a little community.

Then you disciple that community with the word of God and singing. Doesn’t have to take more than five or 10 minutes. Call them together. Read a verse or two. Sing a little short refrain of scripture and say, “Praise God that we’re united together as a family. Now, let’s all go out as individuals in this family and accomplish the mission that God sends us forth to do, whether it’s learning, teaching, cleaning, vocation, all that stuff.”

Remember last week we said that it was the singers who oversaw the physical construction, the skillful working by craftsmen as they built the temple. See the singing in corporate worship, the singing in family worship provides the oversight for how we go about doing our work and what we do then in terms of our vocation is really this creation of beauty in the context of the world. The way Zion is being or the temple was being built. So we build things in the context of our lives and God’s presence builds the world. So there’s this direct correlation between the corporate entity.

The nations come together corporately, but we’re sent forth. We’re also registered individually and then we’re sent forth as individuals. And that’s mirrored as we individually in each household, in each tent of Jacob engage in family worship that takes this very model and puts it into our world as a family as well.

So verses 5 and 6 tell us about the unity and diversity of Zion that she is corporate but she’s also individual and the families are part of that same process, that same picture.

And then finally in this section, the third verse of the second set of three verses, the Lord’s people.

Verse 6: “The Lord will record when he registers the peoples. This one was born there.”

So here we have the two brought together. He registers the peoples, speaking of the group dynamic. And this individual has her roots as her offspring in the church, which is the mother. Paul called or in Galatians of who we are. This is where we’re birthed. It says as corporate group and as individuals as well. God record them. Again, his sovereignty is stressed. We’re here because God has written us in the book of life. And he writes us as peoples, a group, and he writes us as individuals. This one was born here.

So, the Lord’s people is characteristic of who Zion is. And then finally, this leads up to the last verse. The praises of Zion then are described in relationship to all of this. What’s the result of this? Well, verse 7 says, “Both the singers and the players on instruments say, all my springs are in you.”

The result of a proper understanding of our worship then is skillfulness. Skillful, sweet music and song. So, we come together and we learn skillfulness in our singing. We learn how to sweetly select songs that are sweetly composed with beauty and grace, symmetry and proportion that equip us to go out for this mission that he says that we have to bring the nations up to the holy hill to worship him.

Zion songs here are songs of joy and triumph. The singers and the players. Our worship is to be musical worship that is skillful and sweet sounding. Our worship is this is the picture for us. And so we do a number of things in this church to sort of take this element of what we’re doing and improve it.

Many of you came this morning at quarter till 10 and you began to learn to sing a particular psalm more skillfully, understanding how to sing it in four-part harmony or just understanding how to sing the melody line better. See, to be able to sing God’s song skillfully is why we set up this 15 minutes before Sunday school starts. And you see, it’s every bit as important, I think, as an intellectual understanding of this of the Bible that we learn in our classes as a singing and learning how to sing skillfully before God.

If we believe what we’ve been talking about for the last three or four weeks and we believe that it’s absolutely of the essence of the army of God that she sings and does this joyfully and this sets the pattern for the rest of our lives that we’ll live the way we worship and if we worship anemically without skill without strength or courage that’s the way we’re going to enter into the things that God calls us to do this week your family worship will probably be no more enthusiastic than your corporate worship. You cannot teach your children skillfully if you’re not becoming more skillful in music then what will be the implications of this.

It means that we’ll see as one of the missions of our church musical education and development. It means that you’ll see in the context of your homes, you’ll have a desire to engage instructors for your teacher for your children if you can’t do it yourself to teach them music. We should be able to learn music. Any school that’s set up should be able to teach children from the ages of five or six to memorize the different components, the language of music.

To set up music classes is not just sort of thrown down as an option, you know, or as a choice class you can take, but rather at the very heart of our curriculum will be music and an ability to sing and a memorization of the psalms and as we sing them.

So, worship that is delightsome worship. Worship that is enjoyable because we’re skillful at what we’re doing. We’re not struggling with it. Worship that has joy and courage in it where songs are chosen for symmetry, beauty, proportion, and strength. Worship that appeals to the whole man.

I mentioned this idea of unity and diversity. And it’s interesting that if you take the psalms that are written for huge giant worship in the big city, right? There’s a song by a guy named Peter Gabriel about moving from small town with small minds. I know small words. Now I know big words. I’m making my mouth open to say big words. I’m going to go to the big city. I’m going to go to the big church. I’m going to worship the big God. My bankroll is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Well, that’s sort of I mean that’s critical, but that’s really sort of how God moves history. We move from the garden to a city. And they were tribes. Then God has them form a kingdom under David and he centralizes the worship. The decentralized worship of the tribe now becomes centralized worship in Jerusalem where the place is established. So you got to go to the big church because God is a very big God and our worship should catch something of the immenseness and grandeur of almighty God and what he has accomplished in the earth.

But at the same time the way David communicates that and is him being the sweet psalmist who knows how to effectively write music is the psalms are intensely personal, right? Not all of them. A lot of them call for corporate singing and all this stuff, but an awful lot of the psalms are struggles, trials that a person is going through all by himself the way David did.

You see, so there’s this in the sweetness of David’s compositions and in our selection of songs, there must be a blend, so to speak, an emphasis on the corporate realities, the bigness and grandeur of God, but also of his imminence with you as you struggle individually as individuals in the context of your life. And the Psalms do that. The Psalms work both those poles together to produce a congregation and a people who can conquer the world and who can transform the world through what they do.

Before Sunday school here, we learn to sing skillfully. Children, this is why your parents tell you to take piano lessons. This is why you ought to take piano lessons. You ought to learn music at any opportunity your parents are willing to make. And many of them do it a great sacrifice for the family budget to provide music education. Why? Because it is of the essence of who you are as a Christian to be able to sing songs skillfully.

And some of you to write music skillfully, sweetly composing our songs. They’re songs of strength and beauty. They’re songs of joy and delight, but also songs of difficulty and trial, the transcendence and imminence of God.

But so there is this praise that again is spoken of in this psalm on Zion. But the last verse says that the singers and the players on the instrument say this is their message. “All my springs are in you.”

Psalm 46:4 says, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the most high. My springs are in you.” You’re an individual. You’re going to go tomorrow. You’re going to do education. Perhaps you’re going to teach. You’re going to clean your house. You’re going to go to your workplace. But your origins for everything that you are, that’s what this verse is saying, is in you or is in Zion rather.

It’s here. This is the origin of everything else. Zion is the navel, the beginning place of all the world, the center of the world. This is where God chooses in a dramatic intensified way to descend to be with us and to has us end to be with him. This is it. This is the this is why the pattern of worship here becomes so important.

But you know, if all we ever do is talk about the pattern of worship here and don’t have it flow out so it changes what you do in your families, if you don’t take this model and incorporate into your family worship and into your personal worship and into an understanding of your vocation and all that you do, then we haven’t really properly applied this verse.

Or Psalm 46:4, a river whose streams make glad the city of God. The streams make the city of God glad. The church in its worship flows sets the pattern and flows and creates the city of God. So Zion in the context of tabernacle of David worship becomes Zion in the sense of the whole city and indeed the whole corporate culture the nation can be called Zion because this is where the springs are this is the origins this is the pattern that’s set and this is the pattern that we should self-consciously think through how we take this into our homes how we take this into our family worship how we take this into our vocations into the job place.

Ezekiel 47 has this great picture of water coming out of the temple and it fills the world and it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. If all we do is think about calling people into worship and don’t see that this provides the pattern for going out into the world, then the water just stays here and it all dries up. You can’t get it there. God says there’s a river that makes glad the city of God. We are that river as we take these things that we learn and understand and practice and preach here into all the world.

Want to quote here from an article by a guy named Rich L. about the way this sort of works. A gospel-shaped liturgy shapes us into a gospel-shaped people. The rest of the Christian life flows out of the divine service because God has called us together. We find that we want to continue experiencing rich loving fellowship with one another throughout the rest of the week. You see, it all starts here.

Because God has forgiven us, we forgive other people even 70 times 7. Because God has taught us share in the service, we’re driven to teach others that they may share in the wisdom God has given to us. Because God has mercifully served us, we mercifully serve others. It’s why the alms is always done in relationship to the table. Because God has fed us his Son and clothed us in his righteousness, we are compelled to feed and clothe other people. It flows. It flows into the world because God has called on us to give generously a tithe and above.

We learn to be disciplined rather and generous stewards of our possessions and all of life. It teaches us the tithe is a corporate liturgical reminder of the need to be good stewards and to be hospitable and generous in the use of the resources God gives us. Because God has preached the gospel to us, we are led to preach it to others that they may be brought into Christian into Christ rather new humanity as well.

So, Worship sets up this pattern that flows into all of life, producing the springs thereof.

And I want to I want to conclude today by talking a little bit about our mission planning session that we had at RCC a week and a half ago, a week and a day ago. And I want to begin to present a little bit of how we think that this is integral in what we’re talking about today. And one of the what our what we ended up thinking of in terms of the missions vision map of Reformation Covenant Church is really seen.

It’s on your outline and it really is the progression of the great commission. So in Matthew 28, we’re given the great commission, right? Remember what happens in Matthew 28? Where is it given at? Is it in a valley? No, it’s on a mountain. It’s on the mountain where Jesus appointed that they should go and meet with him. And on that mountain that he appointed, he told them about ahead of time. Be here this mountain at this time.

He is there, there he comes with him and they worship him. That’s what it says in Matthew 28 before the actual great commission is given.

So do you see the relevance of that to us today? We’re at the place that God has appointed us to be. Jesus has come and spoken to us in various ways. And our response to the presence of Christ is to worship him in the corporate in the corporate sense here. And then what he does here on this mountain is summarized to us in this great commission.

And he says that go that’s the first word he uses here. And so what he says is the purpose of the worship of him going to the mountain. Our purpose for coming together today is mission. It’s to go and do a particular task that he called us to do.

Now he’s talking here to the officers of the church. And their particular mission has to do with evangelism and world missions, but really it’s true of us as a people. Now your particular mission is a little different. Your primary task is a vocation, but you still have mission as you go into this world, right? You’re called, you’re sent. You’re sent with a mission. And part of everyone’s mission is to call the nations back on the Lord’s day at the next time he appoints to be on the mountain with us to receive our worship and give us gifts to call people to be here.

So, in terms of the vision of RCC, missions, mission to the world is a big part of it. Evangelism, mission to our neighborhood, mission to the greater area of which we are. place mission to Poland, mission to India. Mission is a big part of Jesus’s telling us to come together to accomplish tasks for him.

So we are called and then we are sent out. And so it reinforces in us this concept that we are here for mission. The father sent the son. Son sends us. Hezekiah had this aqueduct built, the river of Shiloh to feed the pool of Siloam out of Zion.

We’re coming out as sent ones for him. Jesus was the sent one. He sent the blind man out as he give him sight and he goes for the Lord Jesus Christ.

So central to what we do as a church is what we do in worship. And what we do in worship is to call you here and at the end to send you out. Now this means that there are we want to think about this particular portion of our service. How is it that we can improve the call and the sending?

One of the things we’re talking about we’ll initiate in the next couple of weeks is adding a little responsive back and forth as we prepare for the confession of sins as we have the call to worship is also a response we’re going to build in at the first part of the service that basically assures you it’s okay Jesus the most oft repeated statement he makes after his resurrection is be at peace it’s all right because people are afraid to come to him and he puts them at peace as they come before him to worship him.

So, we think it’s important as we call you here to assure you that this is where Jesus wants you to be. And so, we’re going to modify that and see if that improves our sense of call, preparing us for the mission of being sent out, calling the nations in a particular way.

But that’s not all Jesus says in the great commission. He says, “As you go then, so go, but you’re to make disciples.” And what he says in Matthew 28 is there’s a two-step process to making disciples. What is it? Baptizing them and teaching them.

We get this way wrong. And if we get this wrong, we really mess up an understanding properly in this verse. He says make disciples as the second thing. The first thing is mission. The second aspect that Jesus prepares us for is discipleship. Discipleship. And discipleship is not just intellectual teaching. Discipleship is the imposition of God’s authority upon you as well as his instruction in the word. It is baptizing and teaching.

So make disciples. How? By baptizing, enrolling them in the army of God. And there’s all kinds of stuff that implies in terms of the administration of the church. We don’t just get together whenever you feel like it or whenever I decide to come here and get instruction. The instruction is in the context of authority, discipline, the forming up the administration of the church by the officers of the church.

You’re enrolled in the army of God by baptism. And it implies that discipleship has this forming aspect. We’re formed up into the army of God and that’s where the instruction happens is in the context of that.

So as our worship flows out into the world it flows with the sense of mission call and being sent it flows in the sense of discipleship which has two components to it. Baptism which is to say rule and teaching which is to say instruction. And Presbyterian churches at least have you know two kind of functions that elders do. They rule and they teach. And so the discipleship of the church institutionally is performed by elders who rule and teach.

And so discipleship, baptize, teach, exercise control and authority in the context of the church. It’s not a democracy. And that’s how you’re going to be real disciples is not just learning a bunch of stuff, but applying it in everyday life.

And if the mission, if the church is going to do this, then we have a requirement to assist the men of the church properly administer their homes by sending a model here. This means that for instance, is the financial stewardship of the church is not an irrelevant area, not some secular area that just isn’t really all that important other than to get stuff done. It’s not just a practical concern. It’s part of the ruling function of the church to properly be good stewards over the resources and finances and the building etc that God has provided to us.

When the church does that, when you come together with an assurance that the stewardship of the church is in place and you know about that, that provides the model for your stewardship in the context of your home and then your stewardship in you each of you as individuals, your own checkbooks, your own money that you have. So again, the worship of God’s people has to occur in the context of a facility that uses real money and has real stewardship responsibilities.

And this is an example of how the mission of what we do in worship becomes the origins the springs of all the rest of life. If our instruction here is to equip is to transform the world, it’s not going to transform the world if the only thing we ever learn about is what we do here. The church has institutional responsibility to train men to be heads of households, finances, administration of family worship, loving their wives, how to properly love and discipline children to exercise both rule and instruction over them, all that stuff.

The church has an obligation to assist men as they go about doing this function. The church has an obligation to bring a proper instruction to men in their vocation so that their vocation’s origins and springs can be in the context of the worship of God. And so sermons should be analyzed regularly to see if I’m talking about vocation, to see if I’m addressing the instruction of families, to see if I’m addressing the use of recreational time.

How much different will we be on Friday night as we rejoice together at Feast Day as a result of what we’ve heard preached the last four weeks? I think I’ve tried to do my job. Your job is to take it and apply it now Friday night. I hope some of you men come up to me today and say, “I’d like to apply it by just speaking a minute or two and praising God publicly. It’s a wonderful thing to do. The scriptures join us to do that.

We’ve got 10 or 15 minutes set aside to do that. But I only got a couple of guys so far that have told me they want to do that. So apply it.

See, so the word of God brings an administration to us. We’re baptized. We’re taught. And that’s discipleship. The origins and springs of the church are involved in discipleship as well. And Jesus goes on in the great commission to assure us of his presence with us. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.

The mission that flows the work of the church flows out into mission. We’re called and sent. It becomes discipleship. We’re formed up. Baptisms is a picture of that at the beginning of our service. Discipline matters. We’re formed up as a congregation. And in the context of that, we receive instruction from God’s word. And then also in the context of that, we’re bound together into community, particularly at the Lord’s table.

And so community is the third phase of what we see as a church as a definition of what our goal, what our purpose, our vision for Reformation Covenant Church is. We want to be better in our mission. We want to be better at discipleship and we want to be better at building community.

The father sent the son and sends us. The Lord Jesus Christ’s word is the exemplar. He is the exemplar in his actions and word for what we do in words and actions, teaching and rule. Jesus is the focus of discipleship and the spirit of God binds us together in song and at the Lord’s table and creates community. And we are have the ability then to have that flow out into our community.

So we analyze. We’re setting up strategy maps to see if we do these things well or not. How are we going to improve the annual events that we engage in? Feast Day, family camp, whatever it is. Should we add more? Do we have too many? How can we build community in a joyous way without tiring community? How can we engage in other acts of community building? So community is a focal point of the church here at Reformation Covenant Church. And community not just in terms of RCC. Community is the experience by the greater church of Jesus Christ in Oregon City and across Oregon and the world as well.

And we have things we want to do in cooperation with other churches here. We want to build. We ought to take the community God has given us here, cause it to flow into the week. That’s why you guys get together with each other during the week because you get together here at the Lord’s table. It serves as the model and you flow out. And that’s why you want to bring more people into that lovely fellowship that we have in the community that the spirit of God creates here at Reformation Covenant Church.

So we see that indeed in Zion in the gates of Zion which God loves more than even our family worship even the individual acts of devotion to him because it is here that God has provided people instruction from his word that will flow out and create mission to the world that will create discipleship in terms of the nations that are brought of the faith and individuals and we’ll create community and joy and a wonderful fellowship that exists in the context of that.

As we take the profound foundations of Zion which is the nature of the trinity itself father son and holy ghost form our worship in the context of that profundity of the triune God and that worship then performs its work in flowing out a river that flows from here making glad creating and rejoicing the city of God.

It’s the verse that Augustine used at the beginning of his book, The City of God. While Rome is burning, Augustine is assured of the profound establishment of the city of God in the midst of whatever difficulty our eyes may behold. Augustine knew that God would firmly establish Zion, it could not be moved. And indeed, as the rivers of Zion worship, the tabernacle of David melded into the temple and now brought into New Testament worship, that is the source, the origins of all the river that flows forth from it.

We’re the people of God, a fiery stream effectual as we go into the world transforming the world. We don’t believe like some of the Eastern Orthodox do that we transform the world by just doing what we do here. This becomes the model and picture that flows out in mission discipleship and community and that has its transforming powers in the context of the world. A river comes out of the worship of the church that changes the world.

The worship of the church can be said then to be the nursery of the city. The nursery, this is where the city learns what it is to do and how it is to be. At the end of the worship, we are sent out and we call people back to worship on Sunday. And as I said, we’re sent out to beautify things. And when we come back, we have gifts in our hands to God, representative of the work that we’ve done for him in the context of our week.

We’re sent out. I go to Poland. Pastor Wilson goes to India. We’re sent out. You go to your workplace, not just to evangelize, but to beautify the world as well. Our worship leads to missions, discipleship and community. And this is the implications of Zion worship in the tabernacle of David. God says that what we do here is to have profound significance in what happens around about us. What we do in this hour and a half, two hours becomes vitally important for the other days, the other hours that fill the rest of the week.

We’re committed as a church. We’ve set ourselves on a task of seeing the importance of the worship of the church and its relationship to these other activities. We’re committed to maturing, becoming more skillful and more beautiful in our worship of God in the context of the church. I pray that you would be with us in this vision. That you would look for ways to implement what you see going on here in the context of the worship service into your lives.

And you’d come to Elder Wilson and myself and you can’t make the connection. You come to say we don’t get the connection, we want to understand it better. We’ll be distributing a strategy map in the next uh in the next month or two as we continue to develop and work it. But this is the model for what we see as our vision at Reformation Covenant Church. We believe that we’re to engage in worship that transforms the world.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for Zion. We thank you for the implications of the term as it works its way out from the establishment of worship there into becoming a term that’s used for all the earth. We pray, Father, that you would grant us grace to understand these things. Pray that as we come forward with our tithes and offerings, we would commit ourselves to going forth from here, applying your scriptures in joyful ways to our vocation and our evangelism and our missions that we might come back next week with glory and praise for you upon our lips.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Walking ever in his ways. By thy toil thou shalt be prospered and be happy all thy days. In thy wife thou shalt have gladness. She shall fill thy home with food. Happy in her loving service and the joys of motherhood. Joyful children, sons and daughters shall about thy table meet. Olive plants in strength and beauty, full of hope and promise sweet. Lo on him that fears Jehovah. Childless blessedness attend. For Jehovah out of Zion shall to thee his blessing send. Thou shalt see God’s kingdom prosper. All thy days till life shall cease. Thou shalt see thy children’s children on thy people. Lord grant peace.

One of the ways that worship flows out from this place is in the prayers that we pray. Asking the Lord to act for the glory of his own name to go out and change the world through us. The context for our prayer this morning will be Psalm 125. Let us pray. Dear sovereign, our rock and our—