Songs for the road: part 3

Join us at Salt & Light Church as Pastor John preaches on Psalm 126. John dives into the different areas that the Psalm covers in prayer.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Taking a look at a couple of songs in a section of scripture called the Ascent Psalms. It's a group of psalms where God's people would walk to Jerusalem as they would go a couple times of year to go celebrate and to worship in the temple. They would, as they're going to Jerusalem, Jerusalem was up on the hill. So it was said that they were ascending to go up to Jerusalem. So these were songs that they sang preparing to worship God together. So we're going to be taking a look at Psalm 126. And this psalm that we're going to be taking a look at, I think it's such a great picture for today. Such a great picture for all of us today. That's great. My son. I was going to say, if we need to split you guys up, we can do that. Okay. What I love about Psalm 126 is that it recognizes that God has done great and amazing things for his people. But yet we still have needs and we still have areas in our lives that have not been fully restored yet. That we have joy where God has come through, but God has also not come through, and we contend for further healing, where we still need God to move. So let's go ahead and I'm going to read through this, these Psalms as we go through. So this again was meant to be sung corporately as all God's people were moving together up to Jerusalem. It says, When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. So we see this psalm is broken up into three different movements as they are walking through this psalm worshiping together. And the first movement is in Psalms 1 through 3 that we see right here. And the first thing that they do is that they remember what God has done. It starts with a memory here. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, that phrase, restored the fortunes of Zion, literally is translated, brought back the captives, or turned again the captivity. Meaning there was captivity and God turned it around. So this right here is exile language. It's hearkening back to a time in 586 BC when God's people were taken into captivity and Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was destroyed. So it's bringing in this picture of just utter destruction here. They had been carried away. Can you imagine if we were conquered by another nation? If another nation were to come and conquer us and basically kidnap every one of us and bring us somewhere else, right? That would be a bummer. That would definitely affect your life and what you would think about God, what you would think about this country, what you would think about everything. And this is something that his people walk through. Something that was really horrible here. This word Zion, too. Zion doesn't refer to a physical place. Jerusalem, whenever you hear God's people say Jerusalem, it's a physical location. Like you can point to it on a map. The word Zion isn't a physical location. Zion is a figurative language that represents where God is in Jerusalem. So it is Jerusalem, but it's kind of more than that. It's more of a figurative place. So while you have a physical location of Jerusalem, if Jerusalem is destroyed and God's people aren't there, Zion isn't there, right? Because it's a this other picture. So they're bringing this back and they're remembering, they're saying that when God restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. They're remembering when they were utterly broken, everything had been taken from them, and God brought them back. And then it moves here to joy. Our tongues were filled with laughter, our songs, our tongues full of songs of joy, overflowing joy, that all of the grief and sorrow in life was replaced with joy. I'll tell you what, there's been times in my life where I've had so much sorrow and grief. I do wonder, do will I ever laugh again? Will I ever felt like that before in life? Where you're just like, I don't know if I'm ever going to walk through this. I don't know if I'm ever going to get to the place where I can laugh or have joy or worship God again. It just can feel so real in that moment. I even love this word here where it says, we were like those who dreamed. And it means, kind of as you hear that, it's this is an idiom. I think a better translation is, it was beyond our wildest dreams. You know what I mean by that? Where God did something so big in their life they couldn't have even dreamt it up. Have you had that in your life where you look back at your life and you're like, God has done things I couldn't have even dreamed of? I didn't even think he would do that. That's what they're remembering. That's what they're calling back. That we were utterly destroyed. There was absolutely no way that God was going to do this, and he did. Have you ever had that time in your life where God has done something for you before in that way? That God has showed up for you in a powerful way, that God just touched you in a powerful way? That's what this psalm is starting out with. It's saying, God, we remember what you did. I think it's so critical that we take time to remember the good things that God has done for us. It's so critical. I tell you what, I forget so easily. My memory is so thin. I think that's kind of true in life. We ask for something from God or just people around, and then once that's happened, we're kind of on to the next thing. So what have you done for me lately? You know, like what have you done for me lately? Familiarity breeds contempt. That the more familiar we get with something, we forget about where we were and where we're actually going. We love to go to the next thing. I know for me, I love, I have like prayer lists and I keep track of things that I pray for. We have, you know, Gina mentioned at the announcements, we have a prayer team that prays, and those prayer requests come in, and I categorize all those and I keep track of them all and do things. But so often it's just easy for me to kind of go from prayer to prayer to prayer to prayer and forget to circle back and say, God, thank you for like doing all the stuff that I prayed for. Thank you for doing all the amazing things. We even are in our congregation, one of our uh kids that were here, Timothy, just a couple of weeks ago was in the hospital. Two weeks ago was in the hospital with a brain bleed, very serious thing. And today he was in the back, I saw him dancing in the back of service during worship. And I just was like, thank you, God. Like we prayed. I did a video. If you were here, if you weren't, I did a video, a FaceTime video that we could send to him while he's sitting in the hospital bed, barely able to move. And God did this amazing thing. And amen for that. But how quickly we can kind of forget that and say, okay, God, thanks for that, but now I need you to do this next thing for me. You know what I mean? So now we get to the second movement that we see here in Psalm 126, 4. It says, Restore our fortunes, Lord, like the streams in the Negev. So this movement here is where it transitions. He spent three verses praising God for what he had done in the past and remembering this big, audacious thing God has done, bigger than they could dream. But right here, we see a need that's here. It says, Restore our fortunes, Lord, like the streams in the Negev. After all that thanksgiving and all that praise, we now realize that there's something that isn't right. That there is something that was lost. If you're being asked for restoration to restore your fortunes, it means you lost something. I think this is also so critical for us when we start talking about Thanksgiving, because here now, God's people are asking for something. But I love that before they ask for that request, they spend time in Thanksgiving and remembering what God has done. They thank him for what he did in the past. Not for the small things, but for the big things. The big things. How incredible would that. I wonder they spent three verses praising God and then they asked for something in one verse. What would it look like if we spent three times as three times as much time in our prayers thanking God for things and asking for things? If I were to do that, my prayers would change drastically. I'll be completely honest with you. There's something powerful in reflecting back in what God has done. I think it'd be wise for us to kind of emulate that. We actually even do that on our website. I mentioned that we have a place that we can, if anybody is needing a prayer request or want prayer, you can go on our website and we'll pray. And one of the boxes there, it's can you, is there something in your life that you are thankful for right now? It's an option. We don't require you to fill that out to get a prayer request. So you don't have to send that in to do a prayer request. But we have the option. And that's purposeful because as we ask for God, there should be something there that reminds us to, like, hey, let's be thankful about what has God already done in my life? What has He already moved on to this concept where God has restored us already, but there are still areas of our lives where we still need restoration is a common theme and one that we talk about quite a bit. It's a tension we find ourselves in, that God heals, but yet we still are hurting. God restores, but we still are broken. We get this picture that there's this continual restoration that needs to happen with God. It's a continual thing. When we pray in the New Testament and when the authors are talking about the Holy Spirit, you're not just filled with the Holy Spirit once, like, oh great, I got the Holy Spirit. It's a continual daily thing. It's like, Lord, fill me again. Come up and you know, pray. Sometimes you might get things, amen. See, why can't you all affirm my sermon preaching as well as what's her name? Mary Ann. Mary Ann? Marianna. Thank you, Marianna. Every single time I'm doing, she's like cheering along with me. I love it. Amen? All right. I love it. There you go. Thank you. There's this concept that we are continually filled with the Holy Spirit, that we are continually moved in. And that's what this picture is showing. That God, you did a great thing. You filled me before, but I need your presence again. Or maybe it's something as I'm sitting here talking, maybe as I'm talking, you may say, you know what, I don't know if I've ever really felt that great big thing that God has done for me yet. Maybe what you're asking, and maybe today, that you can go and say, God, I want that big, that big thing. I'm desperately seeking it. This picture of the streams in the Negev is an interesting picture. I love the imagery of the psalms. Negev is a desert. Think of like the driest, I think of like the old like cartoon like cartoons, um, like Looney Tunes and stuff, when you would see people in the desert, just everything dead, and they go like 10 steps and they're like dying of thirst or whatever. That's kind of what the Negev Desert was like. So even when it says restore forks was like the streams of the Negev, that kind of almost doesn't really make sense. There aren't really a whole bunch of streams in the Negev. When there are streams, they are floods of water. Have you ever been to like desert before where it looks like everything is dead, but they have like all these flash flood warning signs everywhere? Growing up, our family, we would go to Arizona and walk on Indian reservations, and everything was dead, but there are these huge, like riverbeds full that you could tell that, like, man, there there is water that moves through here. And what would happen is you would just get a huge dump and there were flash flood warning signs. I remember my parents telling me, like, if it starts raining anywhere, we gotta get the high ground. And I'd be like, it is 108 degrees, and we are dying of thirst. I don't think this will happen, but it actually does happen, right? We hear the stories of that. So that's what this imagery is showing. It's saying, hey, God, when you restore our fortunes, I just don't want a little bit. I want it to flow like it does in the desert in the flash flood times. I want you to pour out in such a powerful way, I can't even contain it. It's just, it's not just asking for a little bit. God, just give me back a little bit. It's like just overwhelm me with your presence and with your love and with your restoration. Not just a trickle. Not just a little bit. I want to ask a question, though. Do you have the courage to ask God for that type of blessing in your life? It sounds really good, but I'm honest, I don't know if all the time I have the courage to ask for that because I don't know if I deserve it. I don't know if God will love me enough. Or he loves me enough. He does, amen. Was that Marianna? No, somebody else. He does. Amen. He loves us enough. Sometimes I it's hard for us to, if we have not spent time with him in a while, a couple of days, weeks, months, years, however long, it's hard for us to approach and ask for that again. Because it's like, well, a lot of the reason I'm in this is due to my own fault. A lot of the reason is I am kind of sleeping in my bed and I'm just constantly asking God to save me. Do we have the courage to ask God for that type of crazy flash-flood warning blessing? God's people screwed up again and again and again. We see it. Just read the Old Testament. You can't go three pages before you see something that they mess up again, and yet they will constantly ask. And you know what? God constantly comes through with them. It's not always on the timeline that they want or how they want it, but He always comes through. See, the reason that we can ask for this is because, not because of us, it's because of God's character, who God is. That's why we can ask. It's because of who God is, not who we are. So we get into this third movement here. Psalm 126. After we believe that God is the God who restores dry places. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. It doesn't say here, once you stop your belly aching, once you stop feeling sorry for yourself, only then will you have joy. See, it has this picture that it says that as you're sowing, sowing it's a term for an agricultural term. You get seeds and you plant them. So as you are working and as you are doing that with tears, as you're doing something with tears and with sorrow, that we believe that you will reap, that what will come out of that is joy. I find that very inspiring because they are sowing and they're saying that, hey, as we sow with these tears and as we cry in this pain, we need restoration. We have something that we are missing in life. God, please restore that. But as we are weeping and as we are sowing, that you will bring back joy in our life. And that is life, because faithfulness doesn't always feel very inspiring. Doing things when we don't feel like doing them doesn't always feel inspiring, does it? Sometimes faithfulness to God simply means doing the next right thing even when you don't feel like it. Perhaps even especially when you don't feel like it. And this was somebody through one of my mentors through our denomination, uh, Foursquare, they recommended a therapist that I saw. And he also was a licensed therapist, he's been doing it for 30 some odd years, licensed in trauma and EDMR and all this other stuff. But he was also a licensed Foursquare senior pastor. And I remember I was seeing him when I was just installed as the pastor of this church. And I remember talking to him about a lot of things. There are a lot of things that we talked about, but one of the things that we also talked quite a bit about was we would talk about just the difficulties of adjusting to just being like an associate pastor to a senior pastor. Do you ever have like, let's just be honest and vulnerable? Have there ever like times where you feel like I know that I should spend time with the Lord right now, but I just don't really feel like it. And I'm not gonna. You know what I mean? So imagine that's how you feel, and all of a sudden, it's Saturday, and you gotta preach the next day. Uh actually preparing sermons and studying God's Word, it's actually one of my favorite things to do. I I love sermon prep even more than speaking it. I just I love that part. It's so interesting to me. Sometimes you'll even see me nerd out, obviously, on some of this stuff. But I know that there are times in my life in the seasons here where just life is busy and it's difficult. And I remember talking to my doctor, Dr. Wexler on this and just saying, like, what do I do? Like, how do I how do you get to the point as a pastor when you just kind of do things and you just don't feel like it? And you know, first it's assuring me that, like, hey. You're not broken. That's a normal thing. Because a lot of the times we view like senior pastors or other or pastors or anybody else as like more holy than everyone else. It's not true. There's more responsibility we have. There's a bigger load that we carry. So after first telling me, like, hey, that's a very normal thing that you do, that it's it's how it's actually can be healthy to acknowledge that and just to bring that to the Lord. The wonderful advice that he gave was actually very simple, which is, hey, that's your job, you just do it. That was the advice. He says that this is the job that God has given you to do, and he has given you enough to do it, so you just do it. You have enough. And God has given it to you because he's asked you to do this job. And it's something that when you're doing those hard things and when you're on those hard times for anyone else, for us to remember, that God doesn't give you more than you can bear. Whatever he's asking you to do, you have enough to do it. It doesn't feel like you have enough all the time, but you do. I think one of the biggest errors that we make in our spiritual walk is that we allow our feelings too often to dictate our spiritual walk. That we allow our moods to affect our relationship and what we do in our worship. Feelings aren't good or bad. Feelings are just feelings. They are just what we experience. Anger isn't good or bad. It just is. Now, what we choose to do with that can affect something. And we all know this. There's times, I'm sure Monday morning rolls around, and there's a lot of times we don't feel like we want to go to work, is it? But we just kind of do it. That's something with my kids all the time we get into, right? We get all the time with kids where it's like, hey, I want to do, like, you need to do your chubvers. Well, I don't feel like doing the chubers. Well, you're, I don't know whether or not chores have got to get done. I don't feel like apologizing. Because I don't think I'm wrong. Well, you were wrong, and you will apologize, right? Something all of us actually need to hear from somebody every once in a while, too, by the way. Sometimes we feel happy and we're not sure why. Sometimes we feel sad that we're not for why. But we keep praying even when we don't feel like it. And I love this picture. That God's word shows us here, this idea that even though their fortunes are gone and they're begging God, please bring me back. Like the streams of Negev, bring us back. It's this picture is that we are sowing and we are working with just with tears, but we know that those tears will not be wasted. That those tears will reap those songs of joy one day. One of the things I love about spending time with God is that God is a bigger enough container for you. Do you ever feel like sometimes you are just too much? There's too much you? Yeah, right? And you're just like the trauma, the trauma that I have or the grief that I have, if I kind of shared everything with somebody, I will just overwhelm them that there just isn't enough. God is a big enough container for every one of us. He's big enough to hold us. I have too much anger, too much feelings, too much bitterness, too much brokenness, too much rage, too much resentment towards that person. And if I let all of that out, I'm not sure it can be held, but God holds all of it. He doesn't want us just worshiping when we're happy. He wants us to sow with tears, and that's okay. And not only is it okay, it's what God is asking us to do. He doesn't just invite us to, he's saying, please bring those tears to me. If you're angry, come to church angry. If it's time for you to wake up in the morning and you love spending time with the Lord in the morning and you are cranky, pray cranky. Pray when you're full of joy. Pray when you're happy. The point is that we do it in spite of what is going on around us. The tears that we have are real, but they are not final. Those who go out weeping, carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying the sheaves with them. I think sometimes we just feel like I just don't have enough. I don't have enough of me right now. Whatever you have, whatever little you have, you can bring to God, and He can do it. The promise isn't that every seed we ever sow produces on our timeline. It's simply the promise that God is not wasting those tears. God is not wasting those prayers. And some have been praying and weeping for a long time. Have you is there something in your life that you have been praying for and weeping for for a long time and it's just not there yet? You have been planting and sowing in places that have not sprouted anything. And yet you are still weeping and going. Psalm 126 helps us in those moments to recognize, God, you have done great things before. I remember what you've done. God, restore me again, and I will keep sowing even while I weep. I think that this is a word that some of us need here today. We're in a place where you can honestly say that, man, you've done great things for me, but it has been a minute since I felt your goodness or your grace in my life. Or maybe I've never felt your goodness or grace in my life. Lord, my marriage just feels dry. My job feels dry. My relationships. What is that area that just feels like the desert that you're just asking God, God, just bring that back the way it was? Or bring it better than it ever was. Because I'll tell you what, it was never that great. And this right here is why we have the ultimate hope in Jesus. Because God brings life out of those dead and dry places to those overabundance of streams. It may look like everything has ended and nothing can ever grow. But God brought Jesus out of that grave and he can do the same for every dead area in our life. Let's go ahead and stand as we end. I want to walk us through a prayer that is going to be in the same three movements that we actually see in Psalm 126. And as just three simple parts of this prayer, Lord, I thank you for what you have done. Lord, restore what is dry. Lord, help me keep sowing while I wait. So, Lord, right now, I thank you for these psalms of ascent. I thank you that these were psalms as God's people were going to worship, as they were going to spend time with you in the temples of Jerusalem. That there's space for all of it. There's space for praise for what you've done. There's space for asking for things. There's space for realness and joy and laughter. There's a range of emotions that we see in these just six couple of verses. But right now, Lord, I we just want to take a moment and thank you for what you have done. In your life, we're going to take just a couple of seconds. Take a moment and personalize this to you and thank God in your mind for something that He has done for you already.

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Lord.

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Thank you for Timothy, two weeks ago in the hospital, not quite sure what would happen with him, and two weeks he's now dancing in the back of our worship service. Thank you for bringing us through with our church and moving buildings and all this movement and everything that you do. Thank you for all these big things that you've done in every single one of our lives. So now what I want you to do is think about what in your life is dry that needs restoration right now. Take that to God. So I pray for every single one of these things that is dry, every single one of these where we need that flood water to come. I pray that we would approach you with boldness and we would have the courage to ask insane asks of you. Not because of who we are, but because of who you are. Restore every heart in here, every relationship in here, every body in here with physical ailments, every need in here, restore that, God. And then lastly, if everyone can just do a quick prayer that says, Lord, help me keep sowing while I wait. Lord, we pray that every single one of us would keep as we wait and as we are in pain and as we grieve and when we don't feel like it, we will keep doing the work. That we'll keep doing the soul work when our souls feel broken. That we'll continue to move forward while we wait because we believe that those angers and frustrations will turn into songs of laughter and joy. In your name we pray. Amen. I remember those three things this week in your prayers. Thank you, Lord. Restore me, Lord. Help me keep going while I wait. With that, let me leave you with this blessing as you go. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards you and give you his shalom. God bless.