I actually preached those psalms in this congregation before Pastor Stanton was called. Some of you may remember, some of you may be too young to remember. And I remember I didn't quite finish in the beginning, but was able to come back later and finally finish off that series. So I figured that enough time was allowed that I can come back to a couple of these songs. So here the word God comes from Psalm 126, a song of ascents. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who drank. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy. 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 the fortunes, O Lord, that like springs 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 shoes with them. This is the word of God. This one. Father, we thank you for your Word, for your Word read and heard. We thank you that this in itself is a means of grace and a blessing to our ears and to our hearts. Because your Holy Spirit illumines and applies that Word to us specifically. Lord, you've also commissioned the preaching of your word and of your gospel. You've set men apart for this labor. Men who are just like those whom they preach, earthen vessels, feet of clay, Sinners who need to be redeemed by the blood of Lord Jesus Christ, just like those to whom they preach the gospel. You delight to hide treasure in those urban vessels, those jars of clay, especially in the preaching that you might be glorified in. And you grant the strength and the unction of your Holy Spirit to your servants, your servant here now. humbly submits to you in need of that strength to proclaim the gospel with clarity of heart. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. The Psalms 26 come to us, actually, in Book 5. This morning, we were looking at 126. This afternoon, at 127, in these psalms. These were pilgrim psalms. These were the psalms that the people of God especially sang after the Babylonian captivity, after the rebuilding of the temple. It's at that time, at the post-Habilit community, actually, that the Psalter arrived in the form in which we have it now. And these were Psalms, designated Psalms of the sense, that they, in particular, the pilgrims sang while going up to worship God. At the temple, in Jerusalem, second temple, in African-American captivity, they sang these psalms as preparation as they made their way. And Psalm 126 is certainly a fitting psalm for that occasion under the old covenant. It also is under the new covenant of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a psalm of utter elation. I mean, of absolute joy. So much so that the psalmist says, we were because of dream. Because what God has done for his people, he said, don't pitch me. I don't want to wake up from this dream and find myself back in Babylon. Or pitch me. I'm fully awake. What I'm experiencing here. in Jerusalem, having now arrived to begin rebuilding the temple of God, is God's countenance shining once more upon His people. And He is so filled with joy, He can't but sing. It's very clear that whoever wrote this song was one of the ones who answered the call of King Cyrus in 539 BC, for the Jews to return to Jerusalem, to rebuild the house of Yahweh, to rebuild the temple of God. And this is one of the ones, one of that government that answered that call, that made that journey across the desert to this holy end of reestablishing the worship of God on the earth again. After that cease, it is corporate manifestation when the temple was destroyed in 587, 586 BC by the Babylonians, and the people of God were taken away in exile. Now, the Lord has turned once more. His face is shining up on his people, and it's within that context that this psalm was written. But in order to really understand The joy of this psalm, we need to compare and contrast it to another. And so I want to turn to Psalm 137. Just a couple of pages over. Psalm 137 is not in the Psalms of ascent. They end with 134. 135 is a holiday psalm. 136 is what's called the Great Hallel. And then you have Psalm 137, which is recursive verse. This judgment of God became 587-586 B.C. If we can date 126, pretty close to 539-538 B.C., we can date 137-587-586 B.C. where the walls of Jerusalem were torn to the ground. And what you have here is abject sorrow. But a doubt that's almost unimaginable. You see frustration. You see it turn to anger as you look at this song. Because the psalm is suspended under God's crowning providence. Because God is coming in judgment upon his own people. Because she would not hear his prophets and his preachers who came and preached repentance, but presumably God's favor and continued concern. And God came in judgment upon his people. This psalm was written by one of those who tasted. Listen again. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and watched the rear of the Zion. Do you hear the difference between 126 of the Elisha and 137? The utter dejection and sorrow. That's one of the reasons why we love to sing the Psalms, isn't it? Some of you have written down in your paper. Every human emotion is found in the sorrow. As God deals with his people in his providence, blessing them, at times judging them, times of gladness and times of sorrow, you can find it all here. And to understand this constructively, you need to understand the narrative of predictive history. That story of God's salvation here, as you see it in the Old Covenant, anticipating the new, that underlies these songs. Then these songs come alive. The psalmist here is either one of those who saw the temple being torn to the ground, saw the city walls breached, the city walls destroyed, was one of those that was taken away into exile. There were actually three times in which Babylon came against Judah. 605 BC, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and a few others of the brightest young men were taken. 597 BC, 10,000 of the Jews were taken into captivity in Babylonia. Babylon included. Ezekiel, the priesthood god who would have a prophet in power. And now 587, 586 BC, when the west would take a break into captivity, except for the most aged and infirmed among them. They couldn't make the trip. No man named Jeremiah ever came. A prophet of old men, probably this was the occasion of them writing the Book of Manifestations. We need to understand this narrative that underlies these words and songs. Here is God's family covenant. It's God's judgment upon his people. But it's not a final judgment. Look at the prophets that warned them. Jeroboam warned them of this judgment that was coming. But he said, it's going to be short-lived, seven years. Why? Because God was about to give you time. But listen to this song even more as we breathe it. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept and remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung our hearts. They're not playing their hearts. They're hanging their hearts on the willows. You're not going to sing. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors murmured, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. Sing us your songs! They still have the songs, even though the song hasn't yet been put together as we have it in the form now. Yet many, many of the songs are added. Not this one that's being written on this occasion. Come, seek the songs of Solomon. That's what their captives say. Sing us your songs. You have hearts, play them and sing them. How can we sing the Lord's song of the Fatherland? Father, get me O Jerusalem, that my right hand forget its skill. Literally, that my right hand is coming to loose. May my hands forget how poor you are. I don't want to put it ever again. Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Let me never sing again. until God's countenance shines upon us once more, and we are restored. And that's what Psalm 136 is about. I'm going to leave the rest of 137 for you to read at home. But let me warn you, it is vitriolic. It will make you spring back when you read it. It is the interpretation of all interpretations in the psalm. against the enemies of the people of God, who rejoice in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of our God. You can read that on your own because we're going to spend the remainder of our time in the Hattin Salt. Because God was a covenant-keeping God. And God restored them. And this is what we see in 126. Listen again to the elation. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed that our mouth was filled with laughter, our tongue with shouts of joy. The other psalmist says, may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth and never to sing or shout with joy again. until God restores us according to His promise. Well, that's happened. And our Shabbos is experiencing this. He can't help but sing and shout for joy. And it's interesting when you read the narrative portions of this. And also you can see the same thing reading Haggai and Zechariah, these post-exilic prophets that the Lord sent when labors on the temple ceased because of opposition for a number of years to stir them up to finish what they were sent to do. But when they arrived at Jerusalem, there were, among those who came back to rebuild the temple, there were those who were at Jerusalem when the temple was destroyed, probably children, because 50 years of time had elapsed since the destruction of Jerusalem. And now they're returning to rebuild it. to the older ones who saw Solomon's temple in all of its glory, but also saw it be torn to the ground. And we're told in the narrative that when they saw the city, and when they saw the temple, when they remembered what it was before, and when they sat at the altar and began worship, and then they laid out the foundation of the temple, some of us old ones wept. It's nothing like Solomon's Temple. But the younger ones who had not seen, who had only heard, they saw opportunity. And this was most clearly one of the young ones who took this song. And they're filled with elation. Yes, there's work to be done. God, once more, is to be worshipped according to His prescription under the Mosaic covenant. And that's what we see in this psalm. The other thing that's interesting that we see next is the response of the nations. If you look at Psalm 37, it gives a response, or the Edomites did, when the temple was being destroyed, and they said, raise it, raise it to the ground. Because they rejoiced at the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple of God. But now, this mighty act of God sending the remnant back and rebuilding the temple unto the Lord, even those that are their enemies around them cannot help but admit the truth. They say the Lord has done great things for them. Now remember, these were pagans. They believed Yahweh was the God of Judah and the God of Israel. They had their own gods. They mocked God at the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. But here they have to be met. Their God is doing something. His face is shining on them. Again, he's doing great things for them. And then those that return, they take up the song. And this becomes your song. This is your part. Listen carefully. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad. Let's say it together. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad. No, you have to say it louder. It's the shouts of joy that they are saying. I know you're about to do Presbyterian. You don't know how to do this. I recognize that. But let's try. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad. Now, if that was true, How much more is this true today for what the Lord has done for you in Christ Jesus? All that happened in the old, this is redemptive history. It is anticipation of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because your bondage, your exile is not in a foreign land. Your bondage is to stand. And that has to be broken. And you have to be redeemed. And a redeemer had to come. And he came in order, Jesus Christ. This psalm is talking about the rebuilding of the temple, the reestablishing of the worship of God upon the earth. But that's not all that we see in the narrative. In 445 BC, Nehemiah, cupbearer to the king, learns that the walls are still eroded. He goes to the king. He has to leave to go back and do that. He's given that by God. Nehemiah comes about 13 years after Ezra, spiritual reforms, Nehemiah comes in an extraordinary short period of time. All those horrible actors, with a sword in one hand and a crown in another, they rebuild the walls. So worship is restored earlier. Now the city is fortified. All that's lacking is, when will David's son come into the city and take his seat upon the throne? When will God fulfill the promise he made to David and the covenant that he made to him? And they had to wait for over 400 years. And when he came, he shocked everyone. He didn't have a seat, pilot. He didn't take his seat on that design. He went up. that moronic of a house of God, that he closed his father's house. And that sealed his faith at the end of the week. And he knew it the whole time, because he came to reveal him before himself. And that would take the cross. And when he was at the praetorium, he was not crowned with the crown of jewels, but with the crown of thorns. Converted through the Spirit to Jerusalem, the cross on his back. Crucified on Golgotha. That's no defeat. That's the glory of the Son. That's your redemption. So if in that day they say, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad, how much more today do we shout with him again, the Lord has done a great thing in the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet the psalmist is not satisfied. We need to recognize this. We live, we walk in the midst of the nature. We do. We also live in the here and now. We don't live in the not yet. That's why I read Revelation 21 earlier to see what the not yet looks like. The not yet is broken into the here and now. as we're united with Christ at His deathbed and in His resurrection. And yet we see brokenness all around us. We see sin and blasphemy. Blasphemy of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and our God on the cross. We see a task not yet done. We see a world where sin needs to be evangelized. And so, even in the midst of these lasting blessings, we have to think about the commission of the call and what remains to be done. This is true in the Old Testament, and it's true in the New as well. We see it here when he says, and first of all, restore our fortunes, O Lord, like springs in the Negev. Those who sow in tears shall reap the shots of joy. He who goes out weeping, daring, the seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy bringing the sheaves with him. Now, the picture here is of agriculture, but he's not talking about sowing seed in the heart of the city. He's talking about people. What lies behind this is a reality many people don't recognize. When King Cyrus issued a decree for the people of God to return to rebuild the temple, only a remnant answered that call. Most of them remained in Babylon and scattered beyond. They're called those who lived in the diaspora, the scattered ones. And so remnants that went back and rebuilt the temple. God is spinning, they're happening. God's face is shining once more. The temple is being rebuilt. The worship of God is re-established. We see this. These are reasons to rejoice. But there are so many of our brothers and sisters who want to hear that. And so that's the prayer. Restore our fortunes, oh Lord, like springs in the Negev, like springs in the South. In the South, in the Holy Land, which is desert, there are wadis. What are wadis? Well, most of the year, they're dry, stream, or riverbeds. But in the wet season, when the rains come, they become like roaring torrents. These bodies, these barrier beds are full of water that's floating. The picture here is the people of God returning to Jerusalem, like the streams in the Negev. And you would see this in particular, a picture of it, when they were coming, singing the song from the steps in order to worship God. So imagine for a moment that you're living back in that day. But the temple's rebuilt, let's say, the city's reforged high. Jesus has not yet come. But you live, let's say, in Kedar. Or you could say Meshach. These are two places that are suggested in Psalm 120, the first psalm of the Psalm of the Prophets. But Kedar is far to the east. In upper Arabia, which now, of course, was Saudi Arabia, that's where Kaydar was located, the Kaydars are descendants of Ishmael. Kaydar was his second son. Say you're a Jew that lives among the Kaydars. And they were enemies. That's what we were doing sometimes, huh? But you want to go to Jerusalem. You want to worship the Lord. Let's say you've got a thousand sheep. You can't go to your neighbors and say, we need to take care of our pets for four months if we go to Jerusalem, especially when your neighbors are enemies. You have to liquidate everything. You have to sum up your whole herd. You have to reduce your possessions in order to make this kind of pilgrimage. Imagine making that pilgrimage. Imagine for a moment that you cross the Jordan River. And you don't go directly to Jerusalem, but take a less traveled path down to Bethlehem, which was six miles south. And yet now the day comes. It's the time when you're taking your family to Jerusalem itself. And you make that six-mile trip to the north. When you come to a high place where you get to finally see the city, maybe for the first time in your life, can you imagine the joy? And what do you see? You see people. You see people that are behind you on the road from Bethlehem from beyond, who are before you on that road. As that road comes down, the road from the west, from Jaffa comes in. If you can get on the pinnacle of the temple, and you can look out, and you'll see people speeding into Jerusalem for the worship of God, coming from all over the world for this particular feast and festival of worship. That's the picture. That the Son has fallen from heaven, not just to come and worship and then return, but to come and stay. As we come to the New Covenant, we need to recognize this, to rejoice for those that God has given to us, for every sheep of the fold, for every one of you. But we yearn for these seats to be full. We yearn for goody chairs in the aisle. We yearn to have court chairs in the back. We yearn to fill this building so it's kind of like a church in next door. But we yearn for more and more and more people who are pagans, but who are eternally in love with God, who hear us in the word of Jesus Christ, and bow their head to Him. And again. There are many out there who need to hear this testimony. And you get this sense under the Old Covenant, much more so under the New, as we read this, as he goes into this picture, this agrarian picture. Those who sow in tears shall reap the shouts of joy. That's what the farmer does. He takes the seed and he sows it, but he sows it in tears. It's tall, it's labor, it's work, and he sows it knowing that if God doesn't send rain, I'm not going to harvest. And so he's crying for God at the blacks by sending rain in the Altava harbor so he can come rejoicing, bringing his sheep with him. That's the picture that's being painted here. And the old covenant, though the desire was for the brothers and sisters to remain scattered, because they would be restored and come and experience what we're experiencing. What do they do in these places of evangelism and missions and preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and sharing the good news of our neighbors, our friends, our loved ones? By inviting them to come. And that's labor, that's work, and oftentimes it's done weekly. When's the last time you wept over a lost soul of someone that you know, someone you love, maybe a neighbor, maybe a family member? When's the last time you wept over your soul and spent a sleepless night in prayer for them? That is something of tears. And when we do our evangelism, we do it in prayer. But just as God sends running water, God sends the harvest. Jesus said, the fields are grown at the harvest. Why don't we believe Him? And He says that. We say, no, it's not a ground. There's no use in it, I want to say right there. It's not a ground. It's our ground. It'll come to naught. Jesus said, it's white in the harvest. Pray for more to come. Let's stick with it. We need to make prayer for the salvation of sinners, a place of calmness that paralyzes individuals and establishes communication. But the good news is, is when you sow in tears, you do reap with joy. Do you believe God is able to save that person that breaks your heart that doesn't love you? How do you know He's able? You look at the mirror. That's how. He can save you. He can save anybody. If you didn't understand what that says. And who so in tears shall come rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them. And he's not talking about sheaves, he's talking about sons. Of the gold-covered restoration to the worship of God and to the land of God's promise to Abraham, but under the moon. the expansion of this kingdom and the building of this church here in Oregon. A glorious song for the nation, for the recognition that there's still an age to come, for people here and now, and there's struggle in the community. I can't rob us of the joy we have. Father, we thank you for your word. Father, we thank you for your promises, the promises that you made to David. We thank you for the fulfillment of the promises you made to David in the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, in our joy, of being reconciled to you. Don't let us forget those who are still on our side, whose lives were ruined and on their way to utter ruin. And that's captured by you. The Lord, you have sent us. on this mission. Let's go with this and pray. In Jesus' name. Let's take our Trinity hymnals and turn to page number 291. In this I know. you you