Psalm 126 - Sown in Tears

Our difficulties with accepting a situation started with our first parents—Adam and Eve in the Garden. After they had sinned and realized what they did, they hid from God. They didn’t want to face the reality that they had rebelled against their loving Creator. They sewed fig leaves together to not have to look at their shame. They blamed others for what got them into the predicament in the first place.

And not much has changed. We don’t like to stare at our failures and shame. We want to blame others for what got us where we are. We want to busy ourselves and hide from reality.

We do this in our everyday life because we haven’t accepted the fact that we are meant to be broken. We don’t want to sit in the fact that the world is broken. The beauty of the Christian faith is its willingness to accept this brokenness. // I am so glad that early in my Christian faith, I was encouraged to read the Psalms. I read them out loud and their sound was so different than what I heard at church…what I heard in my head.

Too many times when someone is going through pain and struggle, we want to make them feel better. “Hey, God’s got a plan.” Or “Don’t cry. It’ll all get better.” This is cruel. The Bible shows us that, as one author put it: “It is an act of faith and wisdom to be sad about sad things.” Wisdom because looking at the world through tears acknowledges the fact that this broken world is not as it was intended to be. Faith because it looks up to God to restore it.

Psalms 120-134 are a section of psalms called Songs of Ascent. These were sung when people made pilgrimages to Jerusalem for special holy days. Jerusalem was built on a hill and the Temple was at the top. So as they are walking up to worship in the Temple, they are singing this song. And each song is sung through tears.
Two points. Follow the structure of the song. Vv.1-3

Faith Looks Back at God’s Faithfulness (V.1-3)

In the midst of grief, it is easy to forget that you laughed or smiled or were joyful. The great lie of the Enemy is to heap more guilt and shame where the Lord has restored. It is a good thing to look back at life and see how God saved you. How he delivered you. // Maybe it was a job that sucked life out of you. Maybe it was an overdose that didn’t kill you. Maybe it was a friend that was crazy. Maybe it was a a darkness that would not lift. // Each one of us, if we will have the eyes of faith to see how we are still alive. We’re still breathing. If we have eyes to see that, even now is a gift, it’s a sign of God’s deliverance and that he’s not done with you.

But looking back isn’t fun sometimes is it? We have to come to terms with the fact that too many times it was our decisions that brought harm to us.

After all, this is what Israel had to face. They had been thrown into Exile because of their choice to follow their own way rather than bend their knees to God.

Yet we see that God is not like you and me. They had rebelled, yet they were brought back to a place of abundance. Someone failed us or hurt us or said one thing and did another? We condemn. We despise. We hate. // Praise God (!), he is not like us. Nor does he treat us as our sins deserve! V.1: The Lord restored. V.2: The Lord has done great things. Repeat. V.3: The Lord has done great things.
The tendency in life is to think that “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to double-down and tighten my boots.” But faith looks at God’s faithfulness. The Lord restored his people. When they were in Exile, what did they do to get out of that slavery? They didn’t try to coerce or make it happen. They owned their sin and they cried out to God. As slaves in Egypt…They cried out.
The first step to restoration is repenting. It’s seeing a situation and really repenting. Crying out to God and saying, “Show me your ways and I will walk in them.”

You and I too often run to other streams, first. We put our hope in our ability. I’m gonna be a better parent. I’m gonna be a better husband. I’m gonna try harder. But we must start by crying out to God. //. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good thing to want to be better. That’s what God is seeking to do in our lives. To re-shape us, to restore us to his image that we were created in.

When God created Adam and Eve in the Garden, he said, “Let us make humankind in our image.” So in the image of God he created male and female. In the image of God. You are made in the image of God!

When we sinned against God, the image of God in us was not lost. It was scarred. And God is not simply putting makeup on the scars. He is doing reconstructive surgery on our hearts.

And it’s this reconstructive surgery that is so painful in our lives. Because as we ascend the heights, our hearts still hurt. We remember that we experienced joy, but it seems so far away. That laughter and joy and gladness, seem like a distant memory. A dream.

Faith Looks Forward to God’s Faithfulness (vv.4-6)

If God was faithful to you in the past, why would he stop now? If God was good to you in the past, why would he stop being good now? Our problem is that we look to the streams in our life and assume 1:1 correspondence between them and God. People betray us. People harm us. So we think the same of God. All good things flow from him, but they are not him. What seems like harshness is his severity. Severity because he is committed (more committed than us) to change us…to make us better.

We see again that, while we run to other streams that we think will satisfy, they will always dry up. Family will fail you. Friends will turn on you. That job that was so good, will frustrate you. Because God is leading you into the desert. He’s taking you into a dry and weary land where there is no water…

God is not content to let us live in the clouds. He’s pulling our feet down into the sand. He’s forcing us to see how everyone and every hope and every dream will run dry. He leads us to the desert.

So that we cry out to him. V.4 “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb—this is the desert region in the south of Israel.” So that we see that he is the stream in the desert. He is the one who satisfies us. He is who we were created to be filled up with.

But it’s only when our other streams run dry and our tears seem to run dry, that brings shouts of joy. When we truly experience the deliverance and restoration of God in our lives, then we shout for joy. We can’t hold back. We may look like a fool to others, but we know who has delivered us and it really doesn’t matter what they think anyway does it? They didn’t deliver us! They didn’t save us! They didn’t satisfy the thirst of our souls. So we shout and declare among the nations—“The Lord has done great things for me!”

But this shouting for joy is not separate from the tears. For those of us who are struggling right now, this may seem so far away from your experience. // The Lord is shaping you even now in the Negeb. He wants to remind you that, although the weight seems heavy and the faucet of tears still drips and flows at times…he is watering the soil of your life. To be able to receive him. To receive his goodness. To receive his power of deliverance. But our eyes of faith have to be washed with the saline of suffering.

Do you remember what we heard in Isaiah 43:
18 “Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
19 Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.

What is this new thing? Well, we got a glimpse of it in our reading from John’s Gospel.

Jesus came to the town of Bethany to see three of his beloved friends, one more time. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus—whom Jesus had raised from the dead. John mentions this because he doesn’t want us to forget that Jesus was at the tomb of Lazarus when he died and Jesus wept. He wept with Mary and Martha. And he said to them: I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
Why? Because he came to die for all those who turn from their ways and bow their knees to him. Who submit to him as King of their lives.

While all the pain and suffering we experience now seems overwhelming, we are reminded that we have one great suffering left. Each of us will die. And yet, even this desert is made into a river. A river that carries us to God. For whosoever believes in him, shall not perish but have everlasting life.