Psalm 126
Let’s hear God’s word together.
This is Psalm 126. This is a song of ascents. And it says, 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 the shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves in with him. Amen. This is the Lord’s
word for us. Some of you I know have been
following the Psalms of Ascent all along the way. Some of you
are in and out for bits and pieces. But tonight we land on Psalm
126, which is the first of three Psalms of Ascent that create
a little triad. If you’ve been following along
with us, remember the Psalms of Ascent are 120 all the way
to and 34, they’re the pilgrim psalms, the psalms that Israelites
would have sung, recited, memorized, reflected on as they made their
way to the various pilgrimages from their homes to Jerusalem
for the great feast. So you have 120 to 134 is the total of the Psalms of ascent,
but each three form a little triad. And so Psalm 126 matches
well, it goes well with 127 and 128. So in a sense, you should
read Psalm 126 with 127, 128. So as we look at these tonight
and over the next two weeks, you’ll see how they fit together.
But just a brief mention of how they fit together. Remember that
in these little triads of three, there’s trouble in the first
psalm. They state a problem. The second psalm of the triad,
which would be 127 for us, there’s a statement of trust. So there’s
trouble and there’s trust. And then the third Psalm in these
little triads is always something about Zion, something about Jerusalem,
something about how great the city of God is, and it helps
solve their problem. But one of the blessings, I think,
of Psalms 126, 127, and 128, as you look at them together
in a little triad or triangle, is they’re all about Zion. You
can look at these three and see the word Zion, the theme of Zion
in all three. In 126, you have a problem. Israel is back in the promised
land after exile, but they still aren’t yet delivered from all
their troubles. So that’s the trouble. Psalm
127 says, okay, you’re back in Zion rebuilding and you’re having
trouble. Unless the Lord builds, the laborers
labor in vain. So there’s trust. If Yahweh is
the builder, if he’s the chief architect, if he’s the foreman
on the job, as it were, we’re going to be fine. And then 128.
128 shows the blessing of having
trusted in the Lord and letting him build the house. And here
the house, 128 is, well, it’s sort of Zion, but it’s also a
home. One of the great blessings I
think God gives is the family. And this is a picture of all
is right with the world when the children are around the table
with mom and dad. And so those are the three big
themes of these next three Psalms that you come to. But tonight
we’ll only look at Psalm 126. So maybe in the next few weeks,
read these three together and just keep seeing how God works
in all three of them. I’ve entitled this study for
us, this message, The Long Road Home. And the reason for that
is the context of Psalm 126 as is the context for most of
these Psalms of Ascent, may be, but especially here, having to
do with the exiles who returned from Babylon. Remember, God raised
up Abraham, gave him promises. There was Abraham, there was
Isaac, there was Jacob. What happened to Joseph, the
pretty boy? He got sold to Egypt. He got thrown in prison in Egypt,
but God raised him up and he was a deliverer. He helped Egypt
navigate the famine. And when the Israelites, through
his father’s family, came looking for food, he was there to provide
deliverance through food. The people of God grew mightily
in the land of Egypt. They cried out to God, and after
the promised 400 years, God raised up Moses and Aaron. They were
delivered out of Egypt into the promised land by way of the desert
and disobedience and all that mess in the desert. But anyway,
they land in the promised land. They get their allotments. They
get their inheritance. God says, I’ll be your God. You’ll
be my people. Obey me. Worship me. Don’t look
at idols of the Philistines and the whoeverites. They’ll lead
you astray. Worship me and me only. They
want a king, so they get Saul. Saul’s a bad king, so they get
David. David’s a pretty good king. Solomon’s a great king. They build the city of Jerusalem.
They build the temple. They build the palace. The borders are enlarged
and everything’s happy from there, right? Well, because of David’s
sin and because of Solomon’s sin and because of the sin of
subsequent kings, Israel falls into a basic decline. God promises them if you go after
the idols of other nations, if your hearts go after them and
worship them, if you abandon me as your God, it will not go
well with you and it will end in another nation coming from
another part of the world and they take you and they put you
in exile in their land. I will not be with you. You will
not live in Jerusalem. There will not be a temple. I
will not dwell My presence will not be at Jerusalem. And that’s
exactly what happened. Israel was carried off by the
Assyrians, the 11 northern tribes. And then Judah later was carried
off into exile by the Babylonians. The temple was destroyed. The
city was in shambles. Remember the weeping prophet
Jeremiah, who wrote the book of Lamentations? Maybe you’ve
seen Rembrandt’s painting of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet
with the city of Jerusalem behind him, burnt and destroyed. It
was a powerful time in the life of Israel. They got what was
coming to them. God says, you disobey, I will
punish. Well, good news comes to the
exiles in Babylon. And the good news comes to the
exiles in Babylon that they get to return, they get to rebuild,
they get to reestablish worship in the promised land, and they
again get to be a witness to the watching world that God is
a good, saving, sovereign God. And so these pioneers leave They
leave Babylon now all of the exiles did not return only Good
biblical word only a remnant only a small number of people
Went back to Jerusalem and Judea to rebuild and reestablish the
city and its worship and witness for Almighty God they were they
were pioneers they could have stayed you know many of the Exiles
in Babylon did well there. They set up trade, they set up
business, they set up shop, they set up housekeeping. Life in
Babylon was comfortable. Yes, it was a strange, foreign,
pagan land, but God prospered them there. God, in fact, told
them, make a few bucks, live well there, have children, raise
kids while in exile. So the ones who returned to a
broken down, burnt out city were really pioneers. They were doing
something quite amazing. It was a great sacrifice to go. But this remnant goes back. They
take the long road home, as we’ll call it. They came home. The situation was tough. There
were many enemies. Some of you will remember reading
in the book of Nehemiah when They were working to rebuild
the walls. There were sand ballot and the Tobiah and they taunted
the Israelites. Oh, look at this wall you’re
building. It’s such a weak wall, a feeble wall. Even if a little
Fox were to go up on it, that wall would crumble and fall down.
And those, those audible taunts were really the attack of the
devil. We hear that sometimes as a church,
don’t we? Oh, you’re not big, like so-and-so up the street.
You know, you, you, you don’t, you don’t have the drum sets
and the fog machines and the, the climbing wall in the youth
department. You don’t have, you name it, what is the bell and
whistle everybody wants. You don’t have the cotton candy
machine and the popcorn machine. Oh, no, but we have some coffee.
I heard that. We have good coffee here. We have to draw a line
somewhere. We do have good coffee. We just
don’t advertise it. But we can feel that same oppression at
times, can’t we? If a little fox were to walk on the roof
of your church, it would fall in. You’re weak in the sight
of the world, is what we might hear. The prophets of Hosea and
Zechariah prophesied to the Israelites during this time. They encouraged
them. This return from Babylon to Jerusalem was, it was many
years, it was multiple generations. As long as they were out of the
nation, 70 years or so, they were also rebuilding. It wasn’t
like they went back did everything, got it all straight, and within
nine months, they were back in business. No, this took decades.
The people got lazy. The people got idolatrous. There
were seasons where Ezra and Nehemiah said, what is this intermarriage? What is this injustice of the
rich to the poor? And other things, they still
had their same sin patterns. And so it’s a long road home
because just because they were back in Jerusalem didn’t mean
everything was hunky-dory and right with the world. They still
sought after the gods of other nations. Their hearts still went
after other things other than Yahweh. Well, Psalm 126 describes
how they felt when they went back, but it also describes how
they hope for the future. And so you can say, when you
look at Psalm 126, the first part is looking back, how did
we feel when God restored us to Zion? And apparently there’s
been some time since that has happened. The shine has worn
off. How many of you get a new something
and the shine wears off? I’ve just got to have this thing.
I’ve just got to have it. And you get it. You know, say
you get a new car and you hose it off every day. A bird, you
know, does its business on it and you hose it off, you baby
diaper it, you keep it up. But what do we think about our
new car about three years in? Yeah, it’s halfway old, you know,
whatever. We don’t hose it off and baby
diaper it unless you’re just really into the thing. But the
shine wears off of even God’s wonders of redemption at times,
doesn’t it? And so the ministry of the prophets had to get them
going again to love the Lord. And so the second part of the
Psalm speaks of that. They’re looking back and saying,
boy, these were the days. Bring those days back to us. We’ll explain a little bit more
in just a moment. But one of the things the Psalm
is gonna teach us in a broad, big picture is we look at salvation
as already happened. Jesus has come, right? Jesus
has died, our sins are forgiven. But there’s also a not yet to
our salvation. Are we in heaven yet? It’s not
a rhetorical question. No, we’re all sitting here alive,
right? We can’t wait to get to heaven, but we’re not there yet.
Has the new heavens and the new earth been ushered in yet? It
hasn’t. So there’s already to our salvation,
Jesus come, died, forgiven sins, all that, but there’s not yet
full redemption, full glory, fully present in the house of
God forever. And so this is a Psalm that has
that big picture. tension. There’s salvation that
has already been realized and there is salvation yet to be
realized. But nevertheless, the Israelites
in this psalm have returned from the far country. They realized
their sin and they realized the great provision of their Heavenly
Father. And as we think of this theme
of the long road home, don’t think of it as simply a trip
from Babylon to Jerusalem. You know, pack up the Tupperware,
Pack up the articles for the temple and reestablishing worship.
Get your gold in your bags or silver in your bags and make
the two week journey or the one month journey or whatever it
took. Yes, going back was important, but going back with heart and
mind to serve the living God was the most important thing. And so the trouble in this passage
is they’ve been restored to the land of Israel, but they have
not yet fully been saved by God and they’re asking him to do
it again. So look at the first part. Verses one to three. This is the already. This is what God has done already. When the Lord restored the fortunes
of Zion, we were like those who dream. Our mouth was filled with
laughter, our tongue with shouts of joy. They said among the nations,
the Lord has done great things for them. And then the Lord has
done great things for us. We are glad. What was it like to not be in
the promised land? Well, take a little sneak peek
if you want to later at Psalm 137. Psalm 137 is the lament. When we were in the foreign land,
the people who held us captive, they taunted us. And they said,
sing your songs of Zion. And what did the Israelites say?
How can we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land? They
taunted them. They knew what it meant for Israel
to be out of the promised land, away from Jerusalem, out of the
temple. They knew they had hit them in
the jugular by removing them from God’s presence and destroying
their city, their homes, and the temple. And not to mention
the glory of God had departed from Israel, from Jerusalem,
from the temple itself. but God has restored them to
the promised land. And what does it say? We were
like those who drain. Try to see good news lately.
It’s hard to find. I don’t know if some of y’all
watched Who’s the fellow that did the Some Good News? He sold
it to CBS now, but he was the star on The Office. And he had
a little cute new show that he did on YouTube called Some Good
News. And it was great. He showed hospital workers doing
great things. He showed young children who
were trying to make the most of these hard COVID-19 times
and on and on. You see different good news on
the news. People are still winning the lottery. Notice that? People
are still having good news pop into their lives, but you win
the lottery. You ever thought about what you’d
do with it? Some of you are Christians. You wouldn’t play the lottery,
right? And those of you who are Christians and play the lottery,
remember, we have a little difficulty in here. And we could use your
tithes and offerings for that. But what do you think? I’m going
to pay off the house. I’m going to send the kids to college. I’m
going to get a boat. That’s the first thing I’m going
to do if I ever win the lottery. I don’t play it, but I should, so I can
get a boat. But it’s like a dream come true,
isn’t it? And that’s piddly stuff. Can
you imagine? Actually, you can. Not being
able to go to church. not being able to see God’s people,
not being able to come into the house of the Lord and experience
the means of grace. Oh sure, we saw it on TV, we
saw it on the internet, we saw the hostage videos we made of
the earlier Psalms of Ascent, right? And posted on Vimeo or
whatever. But we know a little bitty taste,
but these people were out of the promised land for how long?
Decades, decades. And so when God brought them
back, They were like those who dream. Their mouths were filled
with laughter, their tongue with shouts of joy. The nations who
were watching all this said, look at what God has done for
Israel, because guess what the nations also knew? Look at their
punishment. Look at their banishment. Did
y’all hear Jerusalem has burned? The city of David? I mean, just
400 years, 300 years before, Jerusalem was the talk of the
Middle East. And now it’s been burned and
destroyed and turned into a rat infested terror zone, so to speak. Our
mouths were filled with laughter and the people said, look at
what God has done for them. And then the statement of all
statements in verse three, the people of God say, God has done
great things for us. And that’s really where we ought
to land for just a moment. We ought to think about every
single Sunday. And I could tell people were
thinking about it today. Y’all out sang the organ today. You
heard it too? And it was nice to have our brother
Nick here singing extra loud. Y’all out sang the piano and
the organ and the air conditioner this morning. But that’s what
saved people do. They sing. Saved people come
to church every Sunday and realize God has restored my fortunes.
I was dead in my sins and trespasses. I was under the authority of
the prince of the power of this world. I was locked in a dungeon. I was spiritually dead. I was
doomed to everlasting destruction. And God in Christ has freed me
from those shackles. He has brought me out of the
dungeon of darkness and brought me into the marvelous light of
day. I was dead and now I am alive
again. Our mouths every Sunday should
be filled with laughter. Like verse two says, our tongues
with shouts of joy. The nations or the people around
us should say, there’s something about those ARPs. They sing,
they sing for joy. And then we say in verse three,
the Lord has done great things for us. I don’t know if you’ve
caught this, but in the Bible, there is more than one Exodus.
Sure, there’s the Exodus from Egypt, right? The big one. But
how does Jesus, a little pop quiz, see how well you remember
your Luke sermons. How does Jesus refer to his ministry
on the cross when he’s speaking to Moses and Elijah and the disciples
are there on the Mount of Transfiguration? He speaks of it as his exodus. And there is a greater exodus
than the one of Israel from Egypt. And that is our escape from sin
and death and darkness and enslavement to Satan himself. And so we are
part of the great exodus generation, not from Egypt, not from Babylon,
but from sin and death and from darkness. But one of the reasons
we like to call this message, this study, The Long Road Home
is we are still in Babylon. Interestingly, if you read your
Reformation history, you read a little Martin Luther. He refers
to the church in a Babylonian captivity. And we are not yet
in the new heavens and the new earth. We are still living life
in this fallen world. We’re still living in this broken,
dark and dying world. But isn’t it amazing when God
saves us? How many of you have gotten a check in the mail when
you needed some money? How many of you have been pretty
concerned about a health matter in your life only to get really
good news? Or maybe Our church is in a situation
where we have a problem with our sanctuary. We have a problem
with our roof. This is the thing I told you I was gonna mention.
And it’s probably more than we can afford in reality. One of
the things we keep saying as a group of elders is let’s trust
the Lord. Let’s identify the problem. Let’s identify the solution. Let’s ask the congregation to
help. And let’s sit back and watch how the Lord takes care
of us. And one day, just like the Israelites, we will just
laugh and say, that was a bigger problem than we could even tackle.
but God took care of us. That’s the kind of faith we need
to have, whether it’s about our sanctuary roof or a visit to
the doctor, or maybe about a loved one who needs salvation through
faith in Jesus. God just surprises us at times. That’s why we sang that hymn
just a few moments ago. Sometimes a light surprises. We’re bumping
along in life thinking, ho-hum, things are good, things are bad,
whatever. And God just, he takes care of us. And we laugh. Our hearts are filled with joy
because he took care of us in a way we could never imagine
possible. What does the Apostle Paul say?
For those who are beloved by God in Christ Jesus, God can
do exceedingly far more than we can ask or imagine. And so as we look back on God’s
ways of salvation for the Israelites, for ourselves, for our congregation,
for our loved ones, Let’s expect God to do mighty things and us
to laugh with great joy and simply say, God has done great things.
So that’s a look back at the past, but what is God? What are
they asking God to do? Well, verses four, five, and
six are looking not from the perspective of what God has done
already, but looking at the perspective of what God will do in the future. And the prayer is this, verse
four. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like strings in the Negev. Those
who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out
with weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with
shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. I don’t know about
y’all. I sleep pretty good at night,
but I do worry about things. I’m just like y’all. I earn dollars. I spend dollars. Life is way
more expensive than the dollars I earn. I remember somebody saying,
I’m going to have children when I can afford them. That’s a joke,
isn’t it? When can you ever afford children?
And they continue to suck you dry the rest of your life, is
what I hear. As my dad says, I still haven’t gotten The three
kids I do have off the payroll yet. But life is expensive. I think about that. I think about
my children and their salvation. I think about this congregation. I have my little congregational
cheat sheet. The elders have one of these
also. It’s our, I’ll show it to you here. It’s our little
one pager of all of y’all. We talk about it every session
meeting. We pray for y’all every session meeting. We even have
a list of visitors. We hope and pray we’ll join the church. We
have a list of many of the children that are connected to this congregation
that y’all have told us don’t know love the Lord yet and we’re
praying that they’ll come to know the Lord and so it’s our
duty and our delight to do these things to worry about these things
to pray over these things and how much more confidence do we
have when we come to a psalm like 126 where God in the past
has done great things and we’re looking at maybe dark bleak times But we can expect God to bless
our socks off. And that’s exactly what verse
four is. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev.
Y’all know what a wet weather stream is, don’t you? It’s a
creek bed that has no water in it. Until what? Until it rains. And in a desert land like the
ancient Middle East, the ancient Near East, where Israel was,
when it rained, these creek beds, they were called wadis. W-A-D-I,
they would fill with water and they would rush like a torrent
and all of a sudden a dry, parched land would be filled with rushing
water. And that’s what they’re expecting
God to do. Just knock us over with a wall
of water, God. Fix our roof. Save our children. You know, protect the loved ones
at that nursing home across town. On and on, we have every reason
to worry, every reason to Maybe you have a dim picture of things.
It’s a fallen world, isn’t it? But we have every reason because
of our hope in God to say, just knock our socks off. Just amaze
us with your goodness and your grace. Let our empty dry part
streams fill with a raging torrent of water. That’s the first little
image there. The second image is sowing and
hoping of a harvest. Those who sow in tears. I know
some of you pray for the same things you’ve been praying for
for years. You’re praying for your sons. You’re praying for
your daughters. You’re praying for your coworkers. You’re praying
for this situation and that. And you are daily sowing in tears
and hoping that one day you will reap with shouts of joy. Can
you imagine what it was like for Joseph to go from the most
special kid in Israel? I mean, he got that coat of many
colors. I mean, he was daddy’s favorite.
I mean, he was going to get an Escalade for his 16th birthday,
wasn’t he? Um, if they had them back then, I mean, he, he had
it all. And all of a sudden he’s in a
pit and all of a sudden he’s in a Midian caravan and all of
a sudden he’s in Egypt. And he had heard the Bible stories.
You don’t want to go to Egypt. They’re pagans. They don’t love
the Lord. We want out of Egypt, but there he is in Egypt. And
then he gets in prison and then he sits in prison. And don’t
you think he sowed in tears? Or how about Abraham, his great,
great, great grandfather or whatever? Abraham, you’re going to have
a lot of kids, but Abraham’s clock is ticking and he’s getting
90. He’s getting 91. He’s getting 92. He’s getting
old and Sarah’s not getting any younger and there’s no baby yet.
But all the promises of God hang on what Abraham having a baby,
not through Hagar, but through Sarah. And don’t you think he
laid on his bed at night, looking it up all at those stars and
saying, There’s a bunch of stars up there, but there’s no babies
down here. And so we sow in tears on our
long road home, but we’ll reap with shouts of joy. There’s a
promise. There’s a hope in verse six.
He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing shall come
home with shouts of joy and he shall bring his sheaves in with
him. I don’t know about y’all, but
the glass is way more than half. Empty, isn’t it? It’s half full.
It’s actually, what does the psalmist say? My cup runneth
over. But what do we think? Oh, the cup’s half empty. The
cup’s mostly empty. We focus on the tears. We focus
on the hardship. We focus on what God hasn’t done. But like a dry creek, all of
a sudden filled with water, when we trust God and he does his
mighty work, the creek bed, which was empty, fills full. And so what’s our task in this
life? It’s to fear God. It’s to work hard. It’s to overcome
hardships and remember his promises. And it’s to bear witness to God
and his goodness. Life is often lived in the drought
season, isn’t it? I don’t think any of us are farmers.
I heard y’all talking about a garden a little bit ago and it sounded
like it was doing all right. But aren’t you glad there’s a food
line up the road? Because the garden doesn’t always grow, right? We plant our crops, our seeds
in the dust. And we wring our hands until
the crop comes in. And we do that with our money.
We hope the stock market will pick up. We do that for all our
life and it wearies us. And one of the things you’ll
see over the next two Sundays with Psalm 127 and 128 is, okay,
you’re gonna build a house, let God build it. You just rest. And then there’s going to be
the blessing of God’s house that he built with you and for you.
And so as we live our lives under the sun, under this fallen world,
there is a lot that has happened already. But there is a lot of
salvation that has not happened yet. And we live in that tension,
don’t we? It’s a struggle. It’s a struggle.
And so my challenge to you, my encouragement to you, is keep
looking to God. Keep looking to his promises.
Keep looking to him by faith. The creek will fill. It will
fill. And you will laugh. And you will
have tears and laughs of joy when God does these things for
you. Let’s pause and pray together. Lord, we thank you that our hope
is not in what our hands can do or what our hands have done.
Our hope is in you, the one whose hands from of old have established
the world and everything in it. Help us to trust and serve you.
We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.