Psalm 126. I’m sure regarding finances you’ve heard that expression, past performance is no guarantee of future or present results. People hedging their bets. But when you speak of the Lord’s past performance, there is no hedging. We have a future hope based on what he has done for us in the past.
And it is true and it is certain. If we look to the reading of God’s word, then if you would please join with me in prayer.
Father God, you know that we are dull of heart and prone to sin, prone to carelessness. So Lord, we ask you to open our eyes to the truth of your gospel, that you would unplug our ears, that we would hear your word. And Father, that it would please you to transform us by the power of your Holy Spirit. Father, we know that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from your mouth, and that you would make us Hungry for this heavenly food this day, that we would be nourished in the ways of eternal life. And this we pray and ask through Christ our Savior.
Amen.
Psalm 126, beginning in verse 1. A song of ascents. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy. Then they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them.
The Lord has done great things for us. We are glad. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The British writer G.K. Chesterton, he’s an older contemporary of C.S. Lewis, Well-known book of his is Orthodoxy, and in it he writes that joy is the gigantic secret for the Christian.
He went on and he said, man is more himself, man is more manlike when joy is a fundamental thing in him and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind. Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half holiday. Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.
And you hear something like that, it’s— can sound very inspirational, but it also can maybe weigh you down a little with guilt if you struggle to live up to it.
Now, Chesterton is not dismissing the hard parts of life. He’s just putting them in a proper perspective.
Everyone on the earth, all peoples, of everybody, we as Christians, we actually have the resources in Jesus to walk through a vale of tears and be strengthened along the way to actually have real and abiding joy. And because the Lord restores the fortunes of his people through his son, We must plant our sorrows in the soil of his redemptive grace. And no doubt about it, we all know life brings to us seasons of planting tears in the furrows of our grief. The prophet Isaiah describes such a moment, a bleak landscape because of Israel’s sin in Isaiah 59. He says, we hope for light and behold darkness, for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
We grope for the wall like the blind. We grope for those who have no eyes. We stumble at noon as in the twilight.
That feeling of walking in a dark room and bumping into everything in life. But in the Lord, we have a way for our tears, our sorrows, our struggles to be redemptive. We have a way to direct our suffering to him in honest prayer. And we see that here in Psalm 126. We see that through joy revisited and joy reclaimed.
The psalmist begins with a Song of Ascents, which is simply the title, and that refers to Psalms 120 through 134. They’re all labeled as Psalms of Ascents, and that became the psalms that were sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to worship during some of the, the great Jewish festivals where they were all going up to the temple. And they weren’t necessarily composed originally for this purpose, but that’s how they came to be used by God’s people. And that word ‘ascent,’ it spoke of going up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was on top of a hill, and you went up to Jerusalem in the Bible, and you went up to the temple.
And this is a part of the pilgrims singing their praises to God as they were a part of this festive occasion. And the psalmist, then, he begins By looking back at past deliverance, he revisits this great joy. He said, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
No specific event is referred to. Several occasions, of course, could probably fit well, but he’s just speaking of God’s great deliverance in the past. And it just, in the beautiful form of Hebrew poetry, it’s the The Lord turned, the turning of Zion, and Zion itself is that poetic name used for Israel, for Jerusalem, capturing this, a great picture of what God has done. And when this redemptive act had happened, the psalmist says that they were like those who were dreaming, dreaming in a sense of, can this be real? It’s so wonderful.
Things are happening that I never expected. Can this be real? And because of this deliverance, then verse 2, our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy. And they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. The nations are calling out God’s praise for what they see happening for God’s people.
And notice this childlike delight in what the Lord is doing for them. Real delight and joy. No cynicism, no grumbling. It’s joy expressed in thanksgiving. And that’s always a proper response to God’s grace and mercy.
It’s thanksgiving. You don’t give someone thanks for doing something they owe you. Maybe basic politeness, but not real profound thanksgiving. And that’s what’s being expressed because they’re the recipients of mercy and grace. And that phrase, shouts of joy, it’s repeated.
It’s a major theme for this very short Psalm. So good is the news. That he repeats in verse 3, what the nations have said, but he personalized it for God’s people. The Lord has done great things for us. We are glad.
In worship, God’s people are looking back. They are revisiting what the Lord has done on their behalf. And that question comes, so how on earth are you able to keep a past joy fresh for the present?
Somewhere in one of those strange traditions that developed, you save the top layer of your wedding cake to eat on your first anniversary. I guess you wrap it well and you avoid freezer burning, you can celebrate later. For some people, that first year is wonderful and joyous and you’re just recalling the great event of your wedding into the great event of your anniversary. For others, It was a tough year. And you’re looking back for where you are now and at that beginning, and you’re just recalling the joy and the celebration.
Not sure what the shelf life is for frozen cake, but it does have one. And sometimes we think about our past joys in the Lord as having a shelf life too. How can you have this kind of delight just looking back? To what God has done. And you can, because of the relationship to the Lord, has a current reality for the joy in looking back.
The same way that you would celebrate not only your first anniversary but many anniversaries later, looking back, because of the present relationship that you have. And that present relationship with the Lord enables us to look back to the depths of the love and commitment that he has shown us, the strength that he has given us, that’s remembered in joy.
Augustine’s great autobiography called the Confessions is really just a long extended prayer and reflection of God’s goodness and grace. The whole book is a prayer. And in this reflection, he says to the Lord, By your great gift, I have come totally not to will what I will, but to will what you will. Reflection of the Lord’s Prayer. Thy will be done, meaning not mine.
And Augustine is saying that because of what you have done and having been set free from his former sinful desires, he goes on. He says, it’s now a joy to renounce what I had been so afraid to lose. You cast them out of me. Oh, true and supreme loveliness. You cast them out of me and took their place in me.
You who are sweeter than all pleasures. And I talked with you as a friend.
That’s Augustine looking back and just the, the wonder and the delight in his salvation that he had. A joy to renounce what I used to be afraid to lose. And part of what Augustine was so afraid to lose for him and what prolong his coming to faith was his own desire for sexual indulgence. That was what was his stumbling point that kept him from coming to the Lord because he didn’t want to give it up. And when the Lord finally captured his own heart, he saw in himself how paltry that was in comparison.
His prayer looks back to God’s great deliverance for him, and it fuels his present thanksgiving. Giving to what he once was afraid to lose. It’s now a joy to renounce because of who his God is, looking back to see what the Lord had done for him. And because of God’s past redemption, we are talking about things that we can now have a real joy reclaimed. This prayer that he moves into in verse 4 is a prayer of renewal.
Restore our fortunes, oh Lord, like the streams in the Negev. The Negev is, um, actually the word for dry and parched. It’s also what is referred to as the whole southern region of Israel called the, the wilderness or the desert of the Negev. And this image is one of streams in the desert when the seasonal rains would come and the rivers, the wadis would overflow with water. We too need.
This recurring rhythm of renewal. And just as the seasonal rains bring life to the desert, we need that renewal that the Lord brings us. This is one of the reasons we have weekly communion. It is a part of this renewal and restoration process. We are reclaiming what God has done for us.
And he goes on in verse 5, those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. A beautiful phrase. It’s very similar to what we see in Psalm 30. And there the psalmist writes, for his anger is but for a moment, his favor for a lifetime. And then many people have memorized this section: weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. A healthy reminder that in the Lord, our tears have redemptive value. They’re not the final word. They do not fall to the ground wasted. They’re not like falling on a hot skillet that’s sizzling for a second, and then they just vaporize into nothing.
Because in the long rows of tears planted in furrows of grief, the Lord is able to bring forth a harvest of joy. And only the Lord is able to do this. I think this is why Chesterton refers to joy as a gigantic secret for the Christian. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. And you think, well, who’s this true of?
Well, it’s true for all of God’s people. It’s a promise of certainty for the end when the Lord returns, but it’s a promise for now. It’s true now. It’s present. Verse 6: He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
The image is one of farming, throwing seeds on hard and fallow ground in anticipation of the large bundles of the sheaves from the harvest collected and gathered. What the Lord is going to produce. There’s a worrisome plotting as one weeps and sows, but this gives way to joy.
Question then, is it possible to waste our tears? Answer: certainly. We can waste our tears. We can do that through self-pity. It vaporizes them.
Regret rather than repentance vaporizes them. Being completely self-absorbed in our pain and suffering can vaporize them.
What can we do?
I put this quote in your bulletin. It’s a great one from Eugene Peterson. Joy cannot be commanded. Purchased, or arranged. Very true.
But there is something we can do. We can decide to live in response to the abundance of God and not under the dictatorship of our own poor needs. We can decide to live in the environment of a living God and not in our own dying selves. We can decide to center ourselves in the God who generously gives and not in our own egos, which greedily grab. One of the certain consequences of such a life is joy, the kind expressed in Psalm 126.
See, we can offer to the Lord our, our tears in prayer, and by his strength we go forth to plant, to persevere. We center ourselves in God.
There’s to be a stubborn Faithfulness, a stubbornness born in faith. Now, it’s not just being stubborn, a stubbornness born in faith. I will persevere because greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world. It comes out of that, and we do not do so with a blind hope in hope, of faith in faith. We do so in the truth and reality of the Lord’s promises to his people.
Even as Jesus spoke to his own disciples in John 16, truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. He’s speaking of his crucifixion, which is coming up when everyone is going to be scattered and so much sorrow is going to be upon his disciples. He says, you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.
Because he knows the end of the story.
They’re sorrowful now and the world’s rejoicing, but he will raise on the third day. His body will not see decay or corruption. He will conquer sin and death once for all. And as Christians, we have been called to think past our own small lives and to consider the interest of God’s kingdom and the cause of the gospel.
And in this, we’re not avoiding our pain. And Jesus never did that. For the joy set before me endured the cross, despising its shame. And we’re also not stuck on a woe is me loop. We’re just keep— this is terrible.
Why is this happening to me? We can pour out our tears into the soil of God’s grace and worship and wait for him to bring forth a new fruit, a new harvest. In his people. And yes, we can share our burdens and our griefs with others as a part of being in the body of Christ. And sometimes we do need to have others to see what we cannot see, to share their anticipation of joy when ours seems so far away.
At times we reclaim joy in Christ for one another, and we also learn then to trust what the Lord is doing in order to produce a harvest of righteousness. You think back to the life of Joseph. When Joseph was thrown in the pit by his jealous brothers who were wanting to kill him, and they came up with a better idea of the murder, which was selling him into slavery. No hope of seeing his family, his father again. And then as he’s trying to rebuild a new life in Egypt, he’s imprisoned by a false accusation.
And I’m sure the years that he sat in prison, that he must have, like we would have, struggled not to wallow in self-pity. I’m sure he poured out bitter tears to the Lord in prayer, but it was the Lord who took those dark years to transform and to change Joseph. So much so that when the tables were finally turned and he was able to bring and exact his sweet revenge upon his terrible brothers, he could see with gospel transformed eyes in a moment of great anguish and joy. As he revealed himself to them, he was able to tell them in their own fear, don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God?
As for you, you meant evil against me. He’s calling it for what it was. It was evil, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. See, the Lord transformed Joseph through those tears so that he could walk in the joy of the Lord’s great redemption without anger and bitterness. It didn’t have to mark him.
It didn’t have to taint him. It didn’t have to flavor everything about his life. The Lord enabled him to be set free from that.
If you look again at Isaiah 59, it says in verse 9, we hope for light and behold darkness, for brightness, but we walk in gloom. And then a few verses later, the Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man and wondered that there’s no one to intercede. Then his own arm brought him salvation and his righteousness upheld him. And the Lord declares, a Redeemer will come to Zion.
A Redeemer will come to Zion. And the Lord is the one who saw the tears of his people, self-caused in their own sin, and he took those tears and he allowed them to be buried in the life of his son. Whom he put to death. He allowed him to die so that you and I could be raised to newness of life in joy in him. That is the good news of Jesus.
The Lord takes the tears of his people and they are not wasted because of the fruit of righteousness that he brings forth in his Son who conquers sin and death, who overcomes.
So we can cease asking the question, which we do in hard times, why me, Lord? Because we have now been freed to ask in worship and adoration, why him, O Lord? Why your Son?
That we would receive life through his death. And in that comes joy.
And because of this, it’s not a stale freezer-burnt joy.
It’s full of life and wholeness. And that past gift is present with us now. Not as Chesterton said, that pessimism is, uh, half a holiday for some. No, it’s a pulsating, life-giving, vivacious brightness to the soul.
That in him, we now live and move and have our being as God intended. And we can be transformed from the inside out. The Holy Spirit in us. Taking whatever circumstances come our way, and sometimes there are wonderful circumstances in our life, and sometimes they fall off the edge. We experience both of those, and the Lord is present there through all of those, weaving those things together, that we would bring glory and honor to his Son, that we would be a part of a people who would be able to shout for joy for what God has done and bring glory and honor to his name as we proclaim to a world in desperate need of real joy.
The secret of Christianity is the gigantic joy in which it’s encapsulated because of Jesus, the joy of the world that we were made for, that a joy that will permeate even some of the worst moments. It’s not putting on a happy smiley face in terrible times, but it’s— there’s something there from deep within that resonates to the very core of who you are, that this is not going to destroy me, that my life is hidden in Christ Jesus. Nothing is ultimately going to destroy those who are his, and he will bring about the glory and the honor of his name through the lives of his people. Past promises, past performance is indeed a guarantee of both present reality and future grace. Pray with me.
Father Almighty, we do thank you and praise you. Lord, we confess how often, how often our tears just vaporize into our complaints rather than to be buried in your Son. And Lord, Lord God, we, we pray that you help us, help us to do just that. Help us to take the, the parts of our lives, Lord God, that have been so difficult and so hard and to bury them in Jesus, that we would be raised with him in newness of life. Father, thank you that you too have set your joy before us, that you too have called us to follow, to take up our crosses.
After our Savior Jesus. We bless you, Lord God, for the goodness that we have received.
Father, we thank you that though weeping may come with the night, joy is in the morning. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.