Ancient Hope in the New Jerusalem
The purpose of Psalm 48 is to deepen our hope in heaven for the sake of our witness to the next generation. The main idea here is that
our faith in the future,
our meditation on what’s to come,
our glad hope in God’s promise about the end of time,
will drive and shape what we tell our children about God.
Psalm 48 is aiming at that, and what I’d like to do is to:
show you this in the text and then
end with an application of what this means for us.
And God willing we’re gonna get there by looking at three questions [and we’re going to stack them]:
What is heaven?
What does heaven do?
How does our hope become a witness?
Father in heaven, lead us, we pray, by the power of your Holy Spirit, to understand your word. Show us the glory of your Son. We ask this in his name, amen.
1. What is heaven?
Now I’m using the word “heaven” here, but I want you to notice that the word “heaven” is not used in this psalm. So where am I getting it from? Look at verse 1:
Great is the Yahweh and greatly to be praised
in the city of our God!
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.
Again, the word “heaven” is not used here, but it’s easy to see the topic of these first two verses.
It’s “the city of our God,” or in verse 2, it’s “the city of the great King.” That’s what the psalmist is describing here.
And our first thought when we read about this city is that the psalmist must be talking about Jerusalem, and that’s right … Jerusalem was the capital city of Israel. It was the place of God’s temple and the king’s palace. So it makes sense that Jerusalem is this city …
however what’s described here is not the old, historical Jerusalem, but this city in Psalm 48 is the New Jerusalem. This is the heavenly city. I want to be clear right away: Psalm 48 is about the future city that Jesus will bring here at the end of time when he returns to make all things new.
Now when you hear that, hopefully you have a couple things in your head:
The first is heaven (everybody think about heaven)
The second is a city (everybody think about a city)
Now we’ve got “heaven” and “city” both in our heads. And what needs to happen — especially as we are more and more shaped by the Bible — is that we need these two thoughts to come together. We should think of heaven as a city. Because that’s what the Bible tells us it is.
We know this from Revelation Chapter 21. When John describes his vision of heaven, in the future, he says, Revelation 21:1,
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away [that’s all this], and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
And this is how the Bible ends. The last two chapters of Revelation end by pointing us to this heavenly city. Because this heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, this is where everything is headed. This is what it’s all been about.
And Revelation 21–22 is not the first place we see this. The Psalms shows us this too, and especially this section of psalms around Psalm 48.
Tracking with Psalms 42–48
So for just a minute here, look at Psalm 48, and let’s turn back a couple pages to remember how this section begins. Start in Psalm 42, and if you can I want you to take your Bibles and try to follow along with me.
Starting with Psalm 42, this is first psalm in Book Two, a psalm of Korah, and it starts with a resolute hope. The psalmist describes a gap here between what the he wants in God and what he knows, and there’s a sadness because of this (verse 2). This is where we first read the psalmist questioning his own soul, verse 5:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?”
He questions his soul, and then he exhorts his soul with hope to hope. He says to his soul:
“Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.”
That’s Psalm 42, verse 5, and he repeats that again in Psalm 43, verse 5, and then in Psalm 44 he takes us deeper into his struggle. There’s more struggle here. Just in case we mistake the “hope in God” exhortation to be a kind of abracadabra, the psalmist actually hits his lowest point in Psalm 44 when he says to God, verse 9,
You have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies; you have led us to slaughter (verse 11); you’ve made us a laughingstock (verse 14) — and I don’t think we deserved it! (verse 17).
This is his lowest low.
And yet still, the psalmist here practices what he preaches in Psalms 42–43. He hopes in God by praying. He petitions God to act. He says at the end of 44, verse 26:
Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!
He prays for God to send salvation, and God answers that prayer by sending his King! That’s Psalm 45. And God’s King, the Messiah who saves, is Jesus. Jesus is our true hope and salvation, and we should trust him. If you don’t trust him, I invite you to. Psalm 45 ends in verse 17 with Jesus receiving the praise of the nations forever.
And speaking of the nations and the king, Psalm 46 comes next and says Let me tell you about a city!
It’s the city of God; it’s where God dwells; and it’s unmovable (Psalm 46, verse 5).
From this city the raging nations will be put in their place (verse 6);
from this city all wars will cease (verse 9);
from this city, God, who dwells there, will be exalted in all the earth (verse 10)!
And speaking of all the earth, Psalm 47 comes next and says I want to talk more about that!
God is a great King over all the earth (verses 2 and 7).
God sits on his throne in his city and he reigns over all the peoples! (verse 8)
God is high and exalted above all things (verse 9) — and as Mike said last week, God will have worshipers from every people group throughout all the world, and they will gather (verse 9) as the people of God in the faith of Abraham, by trusting Abraham’s offspring, the Messiah.
That’s what the end of Psalm 47 is saying, and that has not happened yet. Which means as we’re reading these psalms, by the time we get to Psalm 48, we should feel a disconnect between what these psalms have been saying and our current reality.
The city of Jerusalem, filled with God’s presence in Psalm 46, is not Jerusalem as we know it today. Anybody know what’s going on in Jerusalem right?
It’s not a river whose streams make the city glad. Wars and violence have not ceased (not there or anywhere — not yet). Which means these psalms are describing a day in the future.
And we know that before we event get to Psalm 48. These psalms have set us up to think future, end-of-time promise of God. And then Psalm 48 just confirms this.
Heaven Is a City
Everybody look at Psalm 48, verse 1.
The image in Psalm 48, verse 1 is that God, who is great, receives great praise in his city. And his city is unlike any city there ever was! And as the psalmist puts this city before our eyes, he points us heavenward. Notice this:
The psalmist first describes the city as “[God’s] holy mountain” — where do we look to see mountains?
Then the psalmist says the city is “beautiful in elevation” — where do we look to see something elevated?
Then he calls the city “Mount Zion, in the far north” — where do we look to see the far north?
Actually, this Hebrew word for “far north” is a synonym for “heaven.” In some places in the Bible, like Isaiah 14:13, this word for “far north” refers to God’s throne. The idea is that it’s up there.
So right away when we come into Psalm 48 the psalmist wants us to think about this city and to think about heaven and put them together.
The whole Bible and especially Revelation 21 leads us to think this way;
this section of Psalms leads us to think this way;
and even just the first two verses of Psalm 48 leads us to think this way.
So we’re gonna think this way!
Church, what is heaven?
Heaven is a city. Heaven is the future city of new Jerusalem.
Now, what does heaven do?
2. What does heaven do?
The answer is that heaven — the future city of the new Jerusalem — manifests the triumph of the Messiah.
Now in what way does the New Jerusalem manifest his triumph?
There are three ways here in his psalm, and I want to show them to you. These are three ways the New Jerusalem shows us the triumph of Jesus.
First, we see the triumph of Jesus in that all the kings of the earth who have set themselves against him will be conquered.
Think back a minute to Psalm 2.
It’s been a few years since we were in Psalm 2, but Psalm 2 is an important psalm because it gives us the Messianic lens through which we’re supposed to read the entire Book of Psalms. And remember Psalm 2 starts by telling us that “the nations rage.” Psalm 2, verse 1:
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
And that phrase on the nations’ rage is the exact same phrase in Psalm 46, verse 6. There’s a cosmic conflict going on, and it’s because the kings of the earth have conspired together against Yahweh’s anointed, his Messiah, who is also his Son, whom God has given kingly authority over all the ends of the earth.
If the earthly kings are wise, Psalm 2 says, they will willingly bow before Jesus, but most are not wise, and so what will happen to them? Psalm 2 says they will perish. Hold that in your minds from Psalm 2.
Look now at Psalm 48, verse 4, “For behold, the kings assembled” … and the psalmist is saying,
Hey, pay attention here! Same kings from Psalm 2. They’ve come together again, just like they do in Psalm 2, and they’re coming against the King’s city, New Jerusalem.
But look what happens. Verse 5:
As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
they were in panic; they took to flight.
Trembling took hold of them there,
anguish as of a woman in labor.
Now think with me here. If you’re in a city and you look out and see multiple armies coming together to invade your city, how would you feel?
Can you imagine that? You look out and you can see them. Armies coming against you. If I’m looking out and I see that, I’d be astounded. I’d be in panic and anguish. We would be, right? That makes sense. But look at this.
The astonishment and panic and flight and trembling and anguish comes not from the city when they see the invading armies, but it comes from the invading armies when they see the city they meant to invade! Do you see who’s afraid here in Psalm 48? It’s not the city afraid of the invading army, it’s the invading army afraid of the city.
This is the great reverse that happens at the end of time. Evil is afraid of holiness! War is afraid of peace! Anguish is afraid of joy!
So it IS where the Messiah triumphs! All things will be put right. His enemies will be conquered.
Also, secondly here, we see the triumph of Jesus in that the New Jerusalem will be the presence of God stretching over the whole earth.
Look at verse 7 for a minute:
By the east wind you shattered the ships of Tarshish.
In the Bible Tarshish is a famous enemy of Israel. It’s right up there with Babylon as a city that was a real city, but also takes on a kind representation for all of God’s enemies.
And here in verse 7, the psalmist says that by the “east wind” God shattered their ships. And I don’t think this is referring to an actual historical battle in the past, but I think this is about the future. That’s the way medieval Jewish scholars understood the verse. They saw it as describing the future triumph of the Messiah, and an important phrase in how we understand this verse is “east wind.”
That phrase is used about 40 times in the Old Testament, and most of the time it has to do with God’s judgment and salvation. The most notable example is Exodus 14:21. Remember the people of Israel, are leaving Egypt, and they come to the Red Sea. They’re being chased by the Egyptians, their enemies, and they’re stuck at the sea. But what does God do? He parts the sea. You remember how he did it? Exodus 14:21,
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and Yahweh drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
By this east wind, the enemies of God’s people were conquered, while God’s people were saved. And the psalmist, by using the phrase “east wind” here, says, basically, verse 8:
What God promises to do in the future is the kind of thing we’ve already seen him do. We know what he can do and what he will do …in the city of Yahweh of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever!
The Messiah will triumph, and his city will show his triumph, but to what end? What does his salvation mean? Verse 9 takes us there. Verse 9:
We have thought on your steadfast love, O God,
in the midst of your temple.
As your name, O God,
so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with righteousness.
Notice here that Psalm 48 has now transitioned from describing triumph over enemies to describing the experience of life with God. Because that’s what salvation means.
It means we get to be with God; we get to think about his steadfast love in his temple, the place where he dwells. God is in this city, and now his name reaches everywhere, which is to say his revelation. This is the knowledge of him. This is his ways put into action for everyone to see, and one day all the ends of the earth will see, and they’ll praise him. Everywhere his name reaches, his praise multiplies.
And that’s the whole point.
That is the great purpose for all of creation. It’s that “the earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea” (see Numbers 14:21; Habakkuk 2:14). That’s what Psalm 48 is. God’s presence will become the whole earth; which will be this city, the New Jerusalem.
The New Jerusalem is heaven because God is there.
His glory will be close and clear, with nothing in the way. “I saw no temple in the city,” John says, “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22).
And God will dwell with us there, and we will be his people, and God himself will be with us as our God (Revelation 21:3).
That’s heaven!
That’s the city of the New Jerusalem. And when we think about this city we will say, like verse 14 says, “This is God.”
God is here! The presence of God is the whole place! And this is the Messiah’s triumph.
That’s why Jesus came … he came to bring us to God like that.
And, now thirdly, we see the triumph of Jesus in the New Jerusalem because it will be all joy forevermore.
Look at verse 2: This city is “the joy of all the earth.” Look at verse 11: “Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments!”
Joy, you know, is what this has all been about. All of it.
Yahweh, in his triune fellowship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is dependent upon nothing but all things are dependent upon him, and before he made anything, he just was, and he has always been, and he has always been happy in himself. Fullness of joy. Pleasures forevermore. That is the life of God from everlasting to everlasting, and his ‘move’ to create the world was a move to share his joy.
As we’ve seen in Psalm 16, joy is deeper than the universe … because there has never been a time when joy was not, because there has never been a time when God was not. All things then that exist, exist from God’s joy and ultimately they are for God’s joy. That’s all where this is all headed.
The New Jerusalem will be all glory — because we will see God everywhere — and it will be all joy because because God loves to show what we see, and we love to see it, and he loves that we love to see it, and we love that he loves that we love to see it, ad infinitum.
That is the New Jerusalem, and that is because of Jesus. That is his great triumph. It’s what the city shows us.
And so that’s the first two questions: What is heaven? What does heaven do?
Heaven is the city where God is, and it manifests the triumph of the Messiah. And now that leads us to the third question.
3. How does our hope become a witness?
This question is about application, but first let me show you how I get here.
Look at verse 12 and notice there are five verbs here:
walk about Zion
go around her
Number her towers
consider well her ramparts
go through her citadels
With each of these verbs, the psalmist is telling us, basically, to examine the city. He’s been telling us about this city the whole psalm, and now he says to inspect it. Be well-acquainted with it. Basically, meditate on it. This is our city. Keep it always in view. We’re supposed to keep always in front of us.
And we do it for a purpose, which is in verses 13–14 …
All those five verbs together mean basically that we hope in this city, “[so] that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.” [Do you see that in verse 14?]
The psalmist is telling us to deepen our hope in the New Jerusalem — deepen our hope in heaven — for the sake of our witness to the next generation. He is saying to gladly hope in the future that God has promised so that we can tell our children who God is. And the idea here of our children — the “next generation” in verse 14 — goes for everyone.
This is not just for literal parents, but it’s for all of us. We all in the church have a responsibility to those who come after us, to contend and adorn and hand down “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). And according to Psalm 48, our hope in heaven is instrumental here. Our hope in heaven says something about God to the next generation.
That’s the crescendoing main idea of this psalm, and it leads us to the next question of: HOW exactly do we do this? In what way does our hope in the New Jerusalem become a witness to the next generation about who God is?
This is the practical question that we’re left to ponder. Psalm 48 just tells us that our hope is a witness, but now we’ve got to think about how our hope is a witness.
Well, I think it’s this: our hope in the New Jerusalem is a witness to our children about who God is because such a future hope radically shapes the way we live now in this present world. And that radical shaping shows up at least two ways. The first has to do with how we respond to things that break.
#1. How we respond to things that break.
And I have to say this, because as I was meditating on this question Friday morning, I was back and forth on the phone with three different plumbers trying to get someone to come to my house, because around midnight on Thursday I discovered there was about three inches of water sitting in our basement laundry room. Because something broke. That’s not how it’s supposed to be.
And when I saw the water late Thursday night (well, it’s was not good) but eventually I remembered Jesus’s words: “In this world you will have tribulation.”
Do you remember what else he said?
He said, “But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
And we might add from Psalm 48, that he will overcome the world with a new world that he’s bringing here, a new city! And here’s the thing: my hope in that city is going to show up in how I handle this problem … and my kids are watching. The next generation is watching.
This is one way our hope is a witness. It’s has to do with how we respond to hardship.
But another way is less reactive, and more proactive. It has to do with what we’re trying to build here.
Our hope in the New Jerusalem radically shapes the way we live in this present world in that:
#2. We try to build something here that foreshadows our future city.
Another way to put this is that we pray the way Jesus teaches us to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9–10).
And we don’t just pray that, but we actually try to do things here “as it is in heaven.”
We want to orient to the created world like everything that is ugly in this city will be made beautiful when that city comes, and everything here that is beautiful will only be more beautiful.
We want to invest our resources and energy into making our church the kind of community that is bound together by an other-worldly love, and that seeks the peace and prosperity of this metro, and that stands here as a shining light of the supremacy of Jesus over all things.
We want to build something here — as a community, and as a culture, and as a physical place — that is a witness to our hope in what’s to come. We want to build something here that is clear about who Jesus is, and that says, “He is our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.” And then the next generation will see this hope in us and they will share in that same hope themselves, and then they will witness to the next generation and on and on until New Jerusalem is here.
And that’s what brings us to this Table.
The Table
At this Table, as we remember the death of Jesus for us, we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. Because we believe he is indeed coming. Jesus coming to bring the city of the New Jerusalem. He will bring heaven here. He will make all things new.
And if that is your hope this morning, if you trust in Jesus, we invite you to eat and drink with us.
