WEDNESDAY 3rd
Psalm 87
NIV (v3) – ‘Glorious things are said of you, city of God . . .’
ESV (v3) – ‘Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. Selah’
This short psalm is simply a psalm about Zion, the city of God. Perhaps familiar to us through the words of the hymn based around it, ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God . . .’ Where is Zion? or to which city is it referring? The answer is the city of Jerusalem, the city in which God has chosen to dwell and the city which he loves, it was earlier known as Salem in Genesis 14:18.
One bible scholar says about Jerusalem, ‘No city has been coveted after, fought over, besieged, destroyed, and rebuilt as often as Jerusalem.’* It is the city in which the very birth of Christianity took place, for just outside the city wall, our Lord and Saviour was crucified, it was in an upper room on the day of Pentecost where the Holy Spirit fell upon and filled the waiting disciples, it was from Jerusalem that the missionary enterprise of this new body of believers began to spread, fulfilling the prophetic words of Jesus that the gospel would go from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
It is to Jerusalem that one day the Lord Jesus will return in power and glory to set up, establish his throne and he will reign for a thousand years, (Zechariah 14:4, Acts 1:10-11) the prophet Isaiah prophesied the following about the future of Jerusalem in Isaiah 65, in verse 18 it says ‘I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness’ it is after this very same city that the new city will be named where we will live eternally with our Saviour, the new Jerusalem. (Revelation 21:2) In Scripture, we are asked to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we also should pray for its people that God will bless the city and the nation, and particular that many Jews will yet respond to the glorious news of the gospel, realising that it was from outside their beautiful city that the way has been made available in what Christ Jesus accomplished for us all, both Jew and Gentile to have access to the true and living God who is the God of their forefathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
* J. Flanigan – Psalms