Psalm 126: Strength from Past Blessings

INTRODUCTION

Several years ago I took a course at St. Luke’s Hospital about spiritual care of sick people. Our instructor was a Catholic deacon who was a chaplain at St. Luke’s.

His name was John. One of the suggestions John gave us for conversing with patients was to encourage them to remember the “good times.”

Most of us have good memories—memories of loving and being loved, of gifts given and gifts received, memories of successes—and even bittersweet memories of sorrows bravely endured and battles fought.

Can you remember the happiest day of your life?

For me, I would have to say that three days were “the happiest day” of my life.

The first happiest day of my life was the day I was discharged from the army. I felt that if I were any happier I would burst. I was only in the army for 21 months, but it seemed a long time. I was in Korea, far from those I loved. There was a war going on—a war which ended while I was there. I think I was a good soldier, but I wasn’t a very happy soldier.

The second happiest day of my life was the day Charlotte and I were married. It was a dream come true. I had not thought I would marry. When someone asked me why I had never married, I would say, “The desirable are not obtainable and the obtainable are not desirable.” I really doubted that the girl of my dreams would want to marry me. So I was 27 when I was married. That was old in those days.

The third happiest day of my life was the day I brought Charlotte home from the hospital after a 2-month-long illness so serious that we had been sure she would die. I had strong doubts about the reality of God, but I clung to the faith of loving friends from our church, who gathered around me and cheered me with their prayers.

When she came home it was like she had come back from the dead. That was the most educational experience of my life.

Sometimes what is bitter to endure is sweet to recall.

I want to read to you a favorite Psalm in which the psalmist recalls such a happy time in the life of his nation.

Psalm 126

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 the watercourses in the Negeb!

May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy!

Those who go forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,

shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing their sheaves with them.

I. Here is the background of this psalm.

A. In 587 B.C. Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians.

The people of the nation—except the very poor—were marched into captivity--hundreds of miles away to Babylonia.

Psalm 137 tells of their grief when some of their pagan neighbors taunted them, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” The psalmist writes:

How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!

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.

The years went by. The people settled down in Babylon and made a living for themselves, raised their children and arranged their marriages. They welcomed grandchildren into the world. And most of them died in that foreign land. But they never forgot their homeland. They always grieved and hoped to return.

B. Then, 49 years later, in 538 B.C., the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persians.

The Persian king, Cyrus the Great, generously issued an edict declaring the Jews free to go back to their homeland.

Cyrus even gave them back the precious golden vessels the Babylonians had looted from their temple.

The psalm I read—number 126—records their overwhelming joy as they returned.

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.

Picture the captives—freed now—following their wagons through the desert, walking the long trek from Babylon back to Jerusalem.

It was at least 900 miles. If they could walk 10 miles a day, it would have taken 3 months.

But as they journey, they are singing. They are rejoicing. “Their mouths are filled with laughter, and their tongues with shouts of joy.”

Only the oldest of the people have any memories of home country—Canaan—that they had left when little children.

But even those who had never seen Canaan had heard about it all their lives. For them too it was “home.”

As they walked along, they heard the people of the countries they passed say—or maybe they only imagined they heard them say—“The Lord has done great things for them.”

And they took up the chant: “The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad.”

C. But after they got back to their own homeland, things were less perfect than they had hoped they would be.

There was lots of work to do.

Their fields were overgrown with weeds.

The walls of Jerusalem had been demolished.

Their beautiful Temple had been destroyed.

Some of their people had started worshiping idols.

They had had crop failures—hard times.

Have you ever had a dream come true—and found that it wasn’t as wonderful as you had hoped it would be?

It was hard for the Israelites to keep believing that God loved them and that they were his chosen people.

So our psalmist and his countrymen are looking back, some years after that happy time, remembering those happy times, and trying from their memories to draw hope for the future.

Apparently, this psalm was written in a time of drought and hunger,

The people cry out: “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negeb!”

(The Negeb was the desert in the south of the land. In this country rain fell—if it fell at all—in the winter. It filled the dry stream beds and they became rushing torrents. These rains would insure a good crop of wheat to harvest in the early summer.)

D. As they thought of past blessings, they took heart. They looked forward to God’s deliverance, and they sang this prayer—which ends this psalm:

May those who sow in tears,

reap with shouts of joy!

Those that goes forth weeping,

bearing seed for sowing,

will come home with shouts of joy

bringing their sheaves with them.

Weeping at planting time was traditional among ancient peoples—as it still is in some poor countries.

They were planting their reserves of grain. If this seed didn’t grow, they would face famine.

There is an old proverb: “Do not laugh when you sow, or you will weep when you reap.”

Planting was an act of faith.

II. Like all of scripture, this psalm is preserved for our instruction.

A. It encourages us to recall the good times.

We look back to the past in the history of God’s working in the world, and we believe that what God did for believers of old, he will do for us.

We look back on our own lives; we see what God has done for us, and we take heart that he will do it again.

No matter how spectacularly God has blessed us in times past, there will always be new trials ahead.

Do you remember the old stories you enjoyed as a child that ended with “And they lived happily ever after”?

But of course, they didn’t “live happily ever after.” The ending of those stories would be the beginning of another story that we never heard.

There would be many adventures and troubles before their lives ended.

B. And this psalm teaches us to remember God’s goodness in the past to gain strength for the present and future.

God gives us these good experiences to store up in our memory banks for future reference.

We live in hope. We know that even suffering and death are part of God’s work of redemption.

Someone said, “God gave us memories so that we could have roses in December.” Well, we can keep all sorts of happy things in our memories to enjoy again and again until the end of our lives—and, I believe, for eternity.

C. Jesus never said that there would be no tears.

There are lots of tears. But Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Some people call our world “a vale of tears.” And there are tears in every life—tears of sorrow for our sins…tears of sorrow for ourselves and for the troubles of others…

When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” he is saying that those blessed people who sow in tears, will reap a harvest of joy.

St. Paul writes in Romans 12: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”

When you come alongside someone who is suffering to offer sympathy and encouragement and prayers—you are sowing precious seed for a future harvest.

When you weep over the sorrows of our world and your tears lead you to prayer and generosity—you are sowing precious seed for a future harvest.

I take the “sheaves” as representing good work done for God—people served and lives won for Christ.

CONCLUSION

When I was a child, whenever we visited our grandma and grandpa, we listened to their radio. This was long before the age of television.

Grandma and Grandpa had a big wooden radio that stood on the floor. We always listened to that fine radio. We were usually at Grandma and Grandpa’s on a Sunday, and they always listened to the “Old Fashioned Revival Hour,” with Dr. Charles E. Fuller. Do you remember that program?

Dr. Fuller was a gravely-voiced old time evangelist, much beloved by his listeners.

The program featured a fine men’s quartet. And they would sing this song:

 Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

Sowing in the noon tide and the dewy eve.

Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

We shall come rejoicing,

Bringing in the sheaves.

We shall come rejoicing—there is a happy ending—and we shall live “happily ever after.”

Sheet music for "Bringing in the Sheaves" can be found at 
http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/sheaves.pdf