JEHOVAH LOVETH THE GATES OF ZION
JEHOVAH LOVETH THE GATES OF ZION
JT It will be understood that whatever is said as to this Psalm will have the New Testament in mind. This implies that Zion is a principle or system, and therefore becomes a standard for other items in the divine realm, so that the habitations of Jacob are to be thought of in that way. If it is a meeting night, we might think that we should get on as well at home, in the habitations of Jacob; but the meetings imply Zion, and our own houses are not that.
Ques Would the mention of Zion in Romans 11: 26 and in Hebrews 12: 22 be linked with the assembly?
JT Yes, I was thinking of that, for the level is higher there than in the habitations of Jacob however surrounded one may be with books and ministry, or with friendly intercourse, Zion is on a higher level. “Glorious things are spoken of thee”, things are thus brought down to the city. We are said to “have come to mount Zion; and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem; and to myriads of angels, the universal gathering; and to the assembly of the firstborn who are registered in heaven; and to God, judge of all; and to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus, mediator of a new covenant; and to the blood of sprinkling, speaking better than Abel”. So that the ‘ands’ mark out the subjects in the passage; it all opens out into the city, the “heavenly Jerusalem”; it is an ascending elevation.
Ques Is the sovereignty of mercy in Zion in view in Psalm 78: 67, 68, “And he rejected the tent of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim, but [p. 274] chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which lie loved”?
JT ‘Rejection’ by comparison implies the difference between one’s own house, and what is in the mind of God in Christianity, a very wide area.
Rem So verse 69 says, “And he built his sanctuary like the heights”.
Ques Is there a contrast implied between piety and spirituality?
JT Piety is connected with one’s own house, and Zion is on a higher level, and hence the use that can be made of it, how wide the area is! In the references to Rahab and Philistia, and to the one born in Zion, and then to the counting, bringing in a special one, “Jehovah will count, when he inscribeth the peoples, This man was born there”, the brethren will have in their minds that this psalm will lead us to Christ, and that He should be distinguished.
Rem “This man was born there” in verse 4, would that be productive of all the great nations and work out in the man of sin, but the travail of the saints, in Christ as brought forth?
JT The centre of all the counting is Christ.
Rem In 2 Samuel 5: 7, 10, Zion is connected with David becoming continually greater.
JT I was thinking of that, and also where does the counting begin there?
Rem “But David took the stronghold of Zion, which is the city of David. And David said on that day, Whoever smites the Jebusites and gets up to the watercourse, and the lame and the blind hated of David’s soul ... ! Therefore they say, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. So David dwelt in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from the Millo and inward. And David became continually greater; and Jehovah the God of hosts was with him”. It was all counted in relation to Christ.
JT [p. 275] Hence we have the remarkable counting in Revelation 14: 1 of the one hundred and forty-four thousand, “standing upon mount Zion”. And there is the description of them, their virgin character.
Rem Here in the psalm it is individual, “This one and that one”.
JT And the one counted in verse 6, “This man was born there”, seems to be special; “this one and that one” is mutual, perhaps; but when Jehovah counts, we come to the centre of all the counting. The One Who is the centre of all counting is Christ, and in relation to Him we get the “great crowd, which no one could number ... before the Lamb” (Revelation 7: 9), one great result. The tribes spoken of in verses 4 - 8 must be the centre of all in connection with Christ. In Revelation 14, the hundred and forty-four thousand “follow the Lamb wheresoever it goes” (verse 4); a lead is given to them.
Rem They sing a new song in Revelation 14, and there are singers in Psalm 87: 7. They learn the song in Revelation.
JT There is a very near link with the heavenly and the earthly in view of the millennial day. They are with the Lamb on mount Zion, in the divine realm. We have graded glories in the divine realm.
Ques We are to be affected by these thoughts in relation to the coming meetings?
JT There are others later that we are looking for.
Rem It says in Psalm 50: 2, “Out of Zion ... God hath shined forth”.
JT Just so.
Rem We should be like the sons of Korah, subjects of sovereign mercy.
JT Yes; the sovereignty of mercy! We are apt to be democratic, that is the clay mixed with the iron. We must learn what the divine realm is; all must centre in Christ.
Ques In verse 5 of the psalm we have “This one [p. 276] and that one was born in her”; would that mean the sovereign work of God? But “This man was born there” in verses 4 and 6 is different.
JT The idea of quality enters into our present position. The assembly is nearest to Deity in the whole realm. What is sovereign is seen in the assembly.
Ques Is that confirmed in Psalm 48: 2, “Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King”; it would bring us to that thought, the nearest to Deity? The first verse of Psalm 87 would confirm this, “His foundation is in the mountains of holiness”.
JT Yes; it is a question of the quality of what He has founded in it, that is, the earth. So it says (Psalm 48: 8), “the city of our God: God doth establish it for ever”. We must be ready for quality, and that would develop in the assembly.
Ques Would the overcomers of Hebrews 11, especially verse 32, “Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and David and Samuel, and of the prophets”, be like “this one and that one” here?
JT That all fits in with what we are saying.
Rem So Romans 16 fits in, with the worthies of Hebrews 11, into this psalm.
JT The quality in Romans 16 is very evident; there are over twenty of the names there, I think. It shows what there may be.
Rem Over against the thought of mass-production.
JT Very good. The world system brings in machinery instead of men.
Rem “That we may present every man perfect in Christ” (Colossians 1: 28) would apply.
JT Yes, over against mass-production, as our brother said.
Rem So it emphasises each individual person.
JT Quite; so that every one in Acts 1 is named;
“[p. 277] the crowd of names who were together was about a hundred and twenty”; none were viewed there promiscuously; they would all shine because of the quality that was there.
Ques Would the census of Luke 2: 1 contrast with the quality in Mary and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna?
JT How quickly heaven is brought into that, for the angel was there by the shepherds, “and the glory of the Lord shone around them”; they were there looking after their sheep, and if we do that we shall find those who have quality. There we have the “multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”; in Luke 19: 38 the good pleasure is really in heaven, not in men on earth. So that we come to the pleasure that heaven has in these reckonings.
Ques Is quality seen in the flock?
JT Yes.
Rem “He calls his own sheep by name”, John 10: 3.
JT Very good.
Ques “O city of God”; what does that mean?
JT It is a reference by itself. Those that speak of these things, the prophets, are known; and “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon among them that know me”. Also we have what the four monarchies will develop into; it is antichrist; the “city of God”, however, is a system, over against human politics.
Rem The saints’ holy intercourse and conversation over the glories of this city of God is set off against the terrible things prevailing in the world.
JT Yes; “our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens”, as Paul says; Philippians 3: 20. What we are to be conformed to, “into conformity to his body of glory”, a marvellous thought; as we are to be [p. 278] conformed to that, all thought of this world’s politics goes.
Ques Is Paul a model of the highest quality? Is the testimony to be graced with such, perhaps set out in one and another?
JT So we have Paul saying, “Stretching out to the things before, I pursue, looking towards the goal, for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus”, Philippians 3: 13, 14.
Rem Yes, I was thinking of Paul and others as “those walking thus as you have us for a model”, Philippians 3: 17.
JT It suggests what we get in Ephesians 3: 3, that at least there is one person who knows. He sets himself out in a parenthetic way; so Ephesians 3 is full knowledge. The Ephesians were to understand that no one was equal to him, on earth or in heaven, except divine Persons Themselves. He sets forth in himself the zeal and energy we should have for what is attainable at the present time. It leads us to the acme of things in the divine realm; “whereto we have attained, let us walk in the same steps” (Philippians 3: 16); the standard is very, very high.
Ques Is there progress seen in the references in the Psalm to the foundation, then to the gates, and so on, all reaching a climax at the end in the springs?
JT Very good; “All my springs are in thee”; it is a principle of importance set out in the psalm; it is what we “have come to”, and is by divine education. We have it through the Lord personally in Luke. He sent out the seventy in chapter 10, and afterwards they “returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us through thy name. And he said to them, I beheld Satan as lightning falling out of heaven”. But, He says to them, “rejoice that your names are written in the heavens” (verses 17 - 20). It is quality really, and is an allusion to the Levites; it is “the assembly of the firstborn who are registered in heaven” (Hebrews 12: 23); it is a plural word, involving “firstborn ones”. The assembly has the unique place in the whole realm in quality and dignity.
Ques Would “All my springs are in thee” involve having the spirit of praise as one contemplates what there is?
JT One often feels oneself so poor in the matter of ‘springs’; it is an automatic thought, springing and liberty, like Paul and Silas at Philippi, the spring was there in spite of the pressure.
Ques Is not Luke 15 full of heavenly springs? It ends with “music and dancing”.
JT Yes; it is the divine agility running to meet the prodigal, and then there is the caressing; there is no fatigue from the running!
Ques Would “All my springs are in thee” be referred to by Paul in “our mother”
JT You mean “Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother”, Galatians 4: 26. The dignity is given by the Father, but the inward quality of spring is in the mother.
Rem You mean in the assembly.
JT Yes; the reference was to Galatians 4, and to Sarah and Hagar; and the apostle links the matter on to “Jerusalem above ... our mother”, and the energy of spring is like Achsah, and like Rebecca springing off the camel when she saw Isaac; so that we are brought into the realm of springing in the mother; that is Galatians.
Ques Would they correspond with the wave-offerings and the heave-offerings?
JT The one is horizontal, and the other is vertical.
Ques Are these things marked by what is festive?
JT Yes; “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God”; not military expressions, nor mass production, but what is inward.
[p. 280] Rem It is spiritual emotions like Psalm 102: 14, “thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour her dust”.
JT Yes.
Ques Does all this involve the masculine side?
JT Yes; “having marked us out beforehand for adoption” (that is, sonship) “through Jesus Christ to himself”, Ephesians 1: 5.
Ques Does verse 4 of the psalm suggest the nations coming into blessing?
JT I would think not. What we have said shows they were going in the opposite direction, “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon among them that know me; behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia: this man was born there”. These do not show heavenly qualities. They are like Russia in Ezekiel 38, “I am against thee, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal”, who are over against “the land of unwalled villages” (Ezekiel 38: 3, 11), where God will work. This is an Egyptian idea, and a Babylonish idea, and shows that there will be a great combination of nations in the last days, over against what He is doing today.
Rem These are rivals to the glorious city.
JT Just so.
Ques Would the name of the “Most High” be for distinction?
JT Yes, it is a millennial thought.
Rem So we are elevated into our own society!
JT Very good indeed. We are brought back to what we started with: Christians, in a town, with Bibles in our hands.
Ques Would we particularly appreciate the sovereignty of mercy?
JT Yes, indeed. For why should I be here?
Rem It is like the sons of Korah.
JT Yes, as noted in the authorship of this psalm.
Ques Is the “all-various wisdom of God” made [p. 281] known now in this way; Ephesians 3: 10? “Through the assembly” suggests individual quality.
JT Very good. It is the “all-various wisdom of God”; what He used at the outset; wisdom was there then, and is now seen in the assembly.
Ques Would it be connected with Joseph’s “Vest of many colours”, Genesis 37: 3?
JT Very good.
Ques Why does it say, “Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion”?
JT It is the superiority of it; “all the habitations of Jacob” points to ease and to looking after the children; but Zion is still current, and we are to be concerned that our names are there.
Ques Where would our springs be?
JT We may think they are in Christ. Well, but they are in the assembly, too. What a realm we are in! We come to potentiality later; where the possibilities are; and where the pleasures are; and where our spirits are.
Ques Would that be our native air?
JT Yes.
Rem The longer we go on, the more we love Zion.
Ques Does the epistle to the Hebrews indicate how God loves Zion?
JT The Lord makes His own selection, as in the Revelation, and Paul is the same as to the Hebrews; how he hangs his thoughts on certain points; the sayings of the saints are used to hang his thoughts of Christ on, as in chapter 1; and then it is called ‘The book of the opened heavens’; it has in view the Christian Jews at the beginning of this dispensation.
Rem “Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling”, Hebrews 3: 1.
JT Yes.
Ques “The gates of Zion” would stress the thought of the activities of sovereign [p. 282] mercy?
JT Yes, over against Ephesians 1, where love is seen at home; but in chapter 2 love is seen in the realm of opposition, yet acting for us there.
Ques Do ‘gates’ involve accessibility?
JT Hence the word to the persons “that wash their robes, that they may have right to the tree of life, and that they should go in by the gates into the city”, Revelation 22: 14. In chapter 21 we have twelve angels at the gates, and “names inscribed, which are those of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel” (verse 12). It is a matter of what the angels are, and the sons of Israel are.
Rem “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise”, Psalm 100: 4. The gates are connected with the service of God.
JT So also we have in Psalm 24: 7, “Lift up your heads, ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in”.
Rem It is a city that is not devoted to what is militant, but given over to music and dancing, and what is festal.
JT Yes; so that “He that dwelleth in the heavens shall laugh”, Psalm 2: 4. In Ezekiel 38 you have the lawless volumes of armies coming from “the uttermost north” (verse 6); but they and their armaments are burnt and destroyed; God does not give His people any defenders, He Himself is their defence.
Rem So “God is known in her palaces as a high fortress”, Psalm 48: 3.
JT It is just that. In our little meetings (though they are a good few!) someone comes in and “falling upon his face, he will do homage to God, reporting that God is indeed amongst you”, 1 Corinthians 14: 25. There is moral greatness on those lines.
Rem It says, “the secrets of his heart are manifested”.
JT [p. 283] God can reveal the state of a man like that; the man finds out that God is there.
Ques Does sovereign mercy underlie the purpose of God?
JT Well, it is no matter of chance. Each one has an appointed place.
Rem In John 17: 12 the Lord says, “not one of them has perished, but the son of perdition”, that is Judas.
JT The Lord says in John 10: 3,”he calls his own sheep by name”; all are counted, in that sense.
Ques Do we enjoy it more as we see that we are all five hundred pence debtors?
JT Yes. You are referring to Luke 7. So we also get the account of the centurion who loved his servant in that chapter.
Rem All the sons of Korah would feel that they were that.
JT So the titles to the Psalms show that they are not just put there by the translators.
Rem This Psalm begins in setting forth what God is in His nature.
JT Hence in 2 Timothy 2: 19 we have “the firm foundation of God stands”, and here, “His foundation is in the mountains of holiness” (verse 1).
Rem There is much that is ‘spoken’ or ‘said’ in the Psalm. So in verse 3, “Glorious things are spoken of thee”; in verse 4, “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon among them that know me”; and in verse 5, “And of Zion it shall be said”. It is all the conversational side, and issues in praise.
JT Just so; it is not the Athenian side, where they “spent their time in nothing else than to tell and to hear the news” (Acts 17: 21); it is holy conversation, as John says (2 John 12), “to speak mouth to mouth”, that is, not at a distance.
Ques Do the ‘gates’ refer to the deliberations of the [p. 284] saints?
JT You are thinking of Ruth 4, where Boaz goes up to the gate, and calls on the elders to sit there.
Ques Is there a touch of mercy at the end of 2 Timothy 2, “in meekness setting right those who oppose” (verse 25)?
JT Mercy is part of the city’s administration; it is being like God.