These Are The Days Of Elijah Part 6: The Rest Series

Now some of you will have heard Zion talked about in relation to heaven. This arises from the fact that there are a lot of prophecies about what Zion or Jerusalem was supposed to be like. This greeat haven of peace, security and true worship of the one God. However, the real Jerusalem was seldom like this and was often the seat of corruption and idolitary. This gave rise to the idea of a heavenly city or a heavenly Jerusalem where it really would be this place of peace, security and the true worship of the true. Indeed that’s how Revelation finished with the new Jerusalem descending out of heaven to be the dwelling place of God on the new earth. As Jerusalem is commonly recognised as an earthly city while not many are aware of exactly what Zion means, Zion is more closely associated with the new Jerusalem and heaven in some Christian thought, although as with Jerusalem it really refers to both.

But what does the line out of zion’s hill salvation comes mean. There are two psalms that talk about God’s salvation coming from Zion, we read one Psalm 14 the other is psalm 53 but it’s very very similar, so you can look it up later if you want to. Basically, the idea in the psalm is that the human race is corrupt and the psalmist longs for God to come and rescue the righteous for salvation to come. The psalmist identifies this salvation comes from Zion.

So what does this mean? Well we have a number of meanings. Firstly, Zion or Jerusalem was very much seen as the seat of the Israel’s true king, who was descended from David. Thus, we could have some sort of messianic message here. The psalmist could be looking for the true King to come and set things right. The problem with this view is that David wrote the psalm. Another possibility is that Zion is the place of the temple, which is the dwelling place of God on earth. Therefore the psalm is saying that salvation is from God. Although again we face the problem that the psalm claims to have been written before the temple, although as we were looking at this morning even in the time of David it was the location of the ark of the Covenant which symbolised the presence of God and was the reason for God’s dwelling in the temple. This is the probably meaning, that God’s dwelling place on earth is associated with Jerusalem / Zion and therefore the salvation was to come from God.

However, it takes on a new meaning for Christians as Jerusalem / Zion was the place where Jesus died and rose again. In particular Zion’s hill may be referring to this. Therefore “out of Zion’s hill” refers to the fact that salvation is to be found in Jesus and because of his death and resurrection.

Part 4

John 4:27-38

These are the days of the harvest,

The fields are as white in the world,

And we are the labourers in the vineyard,

Declaring the word of the Lord.

Here the song writer draws on the words of Jesus from John 4 in the King James Version. He is essentially saying that now is the time of the harvest, that people are just waiting to become Christians all we need to do is go and pick them, by preaching the word of the Lord. This was certainly true in the time of Jesus and the early church where the church literally exploded onto the world scene, going from an obscure sect of Judaism to the official religion of the Roman Empire in around 300 years, converting millions in that time. It’s certainly true in Africa, South America and Korea now a days, but is it true of Wales and the UK. Are the fields really white, is it the days of harvest. For many it appears not. Churches are shrinking and closing and people are not being saved. One person I talked to recently said its been 17 years since someones been saved in this church. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but we haven’t really exploded recently. So can we really say the fields are white?