Encouragements for Times of Weeping

Happy Sunday, Crossway. This morning, our friends Samuel and Uncle Clintock are

here. And when we think of Samuel, we think of the word sincerity.

Yeah. Pastor Samuel has so sincerely given his life to the church that

he pastors there in Austin, Texas. And Samuel and Unco were actually a

couple that Kara and I prayed with sincerely fifteen years ago when we were considering

injuring vocational ministry. That was really key for us. And Samuel is sincerely

giving himself to the teaching of God's Word and the training of other preachers through

the Simian Trust. So thank you for welcoming Pastor Samuel Clintock. Good morning,

Crossway Bible Church. It is great to be with you. Thank you

for the warm welcome, and thank you for the way the praise team has

led us into worship the worship of God. It's a joy to be with

you. I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters from park Hill's Baptist

Church in Austin, Texas. And one of the members is with me as

well. Thank you Daniel for being here. It's a joy that I get

to be in your congregation this morning and let me just say before we go

on, if you are a guest like I am this morning, if you

don't have a bulletin yet or a Bible, would you please raise your hand

and this way the ushers can come and bring you a bulletin and a Bible

so you can follow along during the service as they do. So let me

say a few words about past your pastor. I love your pastor Josh and

his wife Kara. Indeed, we go back quite a few years ago.

Your pastor loves to brag about the fact that he was my Sunday school teacher,

and that is a true bragging. What that means is, though,

is if the sermon is not going as well as it should, you should

talk to him about she should have done better. Our church in Austin we

have just begun two weeks ago a work of restoration in our basement. It's

a work of restoring the brokenness and the devastation that happened from two and a

half years ago from the freeze that hit Texas. Remember that freeze two and

a half years ago. We are still restoring that. And some of you

are saying, yeah, wow, it took a long time. We had

to work through contractors. We had to work through insurance claims, we had

to change contractors because the work of restoration was just not getting done. And

finally it's there, it's happening. It's sweet to see it. We love

to see something get restored when it has been broken. And this morning,

as you came in, we've already sung about a God who is restoring people.

And this morning in the passage we're going to look at is a psalm,

a psalm in the Book of Psalms that speaks about a God who is

in the business of restoring. Would you open God's Word to Psalm one hundred

and twenty six as we get into the word, if you have your bibles,

opening there Psalm one hundred and twenty six. I'll read the entire psalm.

He just has six verses. Here is the word of the Lord for

us. This morning, 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 thanks for

us. We are glad restore our fortunes. Oh Lord like streams in then

AGEB 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 sheaves with him. Amen. This is the word of

the Lord for us. Would you join me in prayer asking God to bless

the preaching and the hearing of this word. Let's pray, our gracious God.

We thank you that you are God who restores. We thank you for

this word that you have revealed to us this morning. And I asked that

you would help me proclaim it and help us all to hear it. Let

us hear your word openly with a willingness and an ability to receive it and

to worship you and to trust you. We pray this in name of Christ

for His glory and honor. Amen. On first impression, this psalm would

give you the view the idea that the psalm is all about joy, because

there's quite a few verses or phrases words about joy in it. I wonder

if you saw that in the very beginning, shouts of joy, at the

very end, shouts of joy in the middle, you see the idea of

laughter and gladness mentioned. It shows how the Psalm starts and ends and moves

along the theme of joy. It's clearly in this psalm, but the Psalm

is not written for people who are rejoicing. The Psalm is actually written for

those who are in waiting, longing, and weeping. It's written for the

people of God who may have been tempted to give up under the heavy load

of unfulfilled expectations, under the difficulties that seem to have no answer, or

simply the burdens of unresolved, relentless frustrations. Have you been there, You

know what it's like to simply be discouraged because it's been too long, too

hard. Now we see this emphasis in the Psalm that otherwise it would seem

to be full of joy. We see the emphasis on speaking to those who

are weeping because there's a shift between the two halves of the psalm. The

psalm is divided in two stanzas in two halves. The first three verses speak

about God's past restoration in verses one, two, and three, But then

in verses four and then five and six, we'll see a shift with a

prayer request. In verse four. It's the only prayer request in the psalm

and then with an encouragement in verses five and six. And it's the encouragement

for those who are waiting, longing, and weeping. So the theme of

today's message is encouragement for times of weeping. If you're in such a season,

I pray the psalm would be an encouragement to you to lift your eyes

to the God who restores. He's a God who restores. Perhaps you're not

in time of weeping. Perhaps things are going well for you these days,

but you know others who are walking through brokenness and devastation. And I hope

that this song would encourage you to know how to encourage them. But also

keep the psalm in your pocket for times when you will be going through times

of weeping. The God who restores, this God, this song will teach

us this message that the God who restores in the past, restored in the

past, can do it again, So keep asking him and hoping for his

restoration. That's a message that's a lesson. This psalm, even though it's

a short psalm and it's a quick to just move on past, it just

six verses wants to teach us this message that God who restored in the past

can do it again. So ask him and hope for his restoration. Let's

look at how this psalm is teaching us this lesson. There's two moves,

two points. The first one look to God's past restoration. We see this

starting in verses one and two. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those who dream that our mouth was filled with laughter and

our tongue with shouts of joy. Now this is the experience that you and

I want to live in daily, don't we. This is this is a

kind of lot, This is a kind of destiny we hope to have every

single day when we wake up, a day that is filled with laughter,

with joy, with shouts of joy. But the reality is that's not how

life is usually like. And for the Psalmist, the experiences of the past,

when he remembers the days of laughter and shouts of joy, are experiences

of the past, their memories. They're mere memories. And yet even in

memories memories of this, there's a lesson he wants us to learn from from

looking back at the time when God had restored his people. And the first

lesson is who brought about this restoration. The author is very clear from the

beginning, when the Lord restored the fourth of Zion, it was the Lord

who did this. This was not luck, This was not coincidence. This

was not just oh I worked really hard. Oh I was very diligent,

very disciplined. No, he's very clear. The turn of events, the

turn of blessings of restoration for the people of God in this past memory was

caused by the Lord. Even the nations. Even the nations concluded that this

restoration was not the doing of the people of Israel. We can see that

in verse two. Oh, in verse three, the Lord has done great

things for us. At the end of verse two they said that among the

nations, the Lord has done great things for them. The restoration that the

Psalmist is talking about in the past was not their own doing. It was

the Lord's friend. If you're new to Christianity, if you're if the Christian

religion is something that you're exploring and you're new to it, this is one

of the starting points that we ask Christians to make very clear, unapologetically.

It's that we need the help of someone other than ourselves to get us out

of the trouble that we are in and that help is not coming from the

government. That help is not coming from our friends. The help is not

coming from our family. The help is not coming from an ideal mate that

we're hoping for. But we need a help, the help from the one

who made us. And the testimony of the Psalm is that the one who

restored the fortunes of the people in the Psalm is God himself. We cannot

pull up ourselves by our bootstraps. We need to depend on God. And

this hits at the heart of the American society values, and that teaches us

to be independent, to do things on our own, so that we can

have control over our destiny, to do the things we want to do the

way we want them to be done when we want them to be done.

And to be in this place where someone else needs to restore you and you

are at their mercy is a very vulnerable place. But that's what sin does

to us. It brings us, brings us brokenness at such a level,

at such a depthness that we cannot pull ourselves out of the corruption of sin.

We need someone else. And this someone else that we proclaim unapologetically is

God, our maker. He's the one who has redeemed us. He's the

one who restores his people. He has done it in the Old Testament.

Now, the Psalmist looks favorably to this event in the past, when God

has restored the fortunes of his people. And there's a few things about this

restoration. The Psalmist says that it seemed unreal. Did you notice that when

the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.

This actually shows the depthness of their hopelessness. They could not believe that's possible

anymore, to be redeemed, any kind of redemption, any kind of restoration,

would totally be like a dream come true. Unreal. That's the point

that he's saying here. Our situation was so desperate. We could not save

ourselves, we could not restore ourselves. Oh, friends, that's a very

vulnerable place to be in. But because it's so vulnerable, that's why this

restoration looks so amazingly unreal. Humanly speaking, that friend, there are times

when God leaves us in circumstances in life that literally seemed impossible for us to

get out of. No human solution, no way to see the end.

The light at the end of the tunnel. And yet such situations are a

stage in which God loves to work to remind us one that we are not

capable of restoring ourselves, that we need someone other bigger than ourselves to rescue

us, to restore us. Friends, that kind of place of vulnerability is

a good place to be in because humanity loves to do it all ourselves.

So when if the Lord has you in a stage like that in life,

don't despise that place of total helplessness, in a place like that, from

a place like that, look to the God who is able to restore the

fortunes of his people. And then and the Psalmist says, not only was

it like like unreal to us, like we were dreaming, but he says,

we are Our mouths, our lips were filled with shouts of joy.

Or friends, this is not simply the inner joy that you just keep to

yourself. No, this is this is allowed joy that you cannot contain.

You cannot keep it in yourself, shouts of joy. I don't know how

it is in your household. In our household, we have three children from

ages thirteen to eleven and ten actually, but our kids there it doesn't take

much for them to just burst in shouts of joy. And if your house

is like ours, you know what that means. Kids know how to explode

in joy, but we adults, we feel a little more self conscious conscientious.

If I do that, what would people think? What would they hear

or say if they hear me just explode in shouts of joy. Let me

just encourage you and give you a short, easy suggestion of how you can

do that without feeling like others will look weird at you. Every Sunday morning,

when you gather in this place and you come to praise the God who

restores his people, you get an opportunity to shout. Don't you're singing?

Be just a quiet singing afraid of what people say they if they hear how

your voice goes. Just shout to this God, if he has done great

things for you, you have great reasons to let your joy explode. Belt

it out, as they say, friends, the people of God who experienced

God's restoration should naturally explode with joy. Does that characterize you? Do you

have reasons why you should explode with joy? By the way, kids explode

with joy with all kinds of little silly things. We have such serious,

such such deep, such amazing reasons to explode with joy, and yet we

keep it to ourselves. The friends. The author of the psalm tells us

that God's past restoration was so great that they could not contain their joy to

themselves. It was loud rejoicing. Now, what was this restoration about?

Why were they exploding in such rejoicings. It's unclear. The psalmness doesn't tell

us exactly what was the situation. There's various theories. Some may say there's

a major calamity of major family that God rescued his people from. Others say

that perhaps this is talking about the major restoration, namely the bringing back of

the captives from Babylon. When God had told his people that if they forsake

the Lord and go after foreign gods, God will take them out of the

land that he had given them in as a blessing. So they did what

God warned them not to do. They sinned against the Lord, they rebelled

against him, and God did what he said he would do. He took

him out of the land. But God also promised, in his good mercy

and great love, that seventy years later he will bring them back into the

land, he will bring them out of captivity, and he did so.

When he did, the people are rejoicing. They're full of joy because they

could not pull this up on their own. Friends. Perhaps this is what

the passage is talking about. God caused a pagan king to issue an edict

that would give the right to all the Israelite captives to return back to their

land, and he even gave them money and resources to rebuild a temple.

God did what he said he would, and now that people of God are

rejoicing, they're realizing God has indeed restored the fortunes of Zion. But even

if it's unclear if that's exactly the situation, and we don't have to debate

which one it is, the bottom line is the Old Testament is speaking about

this crisis when God restored the fortunes of Zion, the fortunes of his people.

But the Old Testament is looking forward to another time when God would continue

to work his restoration in even in a more amazing way by sending his own

son, Jesus. They turn Son of God to become human. He left

the glory that rightly belonged to him, and he came into a land of

bondage, and he lived like a human being. He was a human being.

He lived a perfect life that God requires of any of us. And

yet he died the death that God demanded from all rebels and all sinners.

He died on a cross, paying for the guilt and for the sins that

you and I have committed. And on the third day God rose him from

the dead, brought him back to life, conquering death, and then seated

him at the right hand of the Father. So that now this Jesus is

the one through whom God is restoring his people in a culminating way. We

Christians today have more reasons to praise God for his past restoration that he has

worked for us. We have way more reasons than the Jewish people had in

this psalm. Or friends, if you're not a Christian, this is the

past restoration that we love to brag about every time we gather for church.

The songs we have sung have been talking about a God who restores and rescues

us through his son Jesus. And you have not yet tasted and experienced this

restoration in your life. This restoration can be yours today as well. If

you would turn away from your sin and trust in the God who restores his

people. If you want to know more about what that means, when the

service is a smiths, talk to someone who is here, Talk to one

of the pastors, one of the Christians, one of the believers in the

church, and they will tell you more about that. For those of us

who are believers, who have experienced this restoration in the past, do you

remember the day? Do you remember what it was like to have the guilt

of your sin removed, to have your conscience cleans, to experience the peace

with God? Do you remember what it was like? Or perhaps there's other

experiences restoration that God has worked in your life, perhaps a life threatening illness,

perhaps a crisis that at the time it seemed humanly impossible, and God

rescued you out of it, and here you are. Do you remember the

way God has worked in your life to restore you? Oh, friends,

such times of past restoration our wonderful experience, a wonderful opportunity for us to

just meditate on the God who restores. He has done it. If you've

lived a kind of life where it's been very sheltered and have not dealt with

much crisis or lots of troubles. I want to encourage you to read about

Christians in the past, read Christian biographies, learn how God has worked powerfully

in the in the history of Christianity to restore, to rescue his people from

various calamities, from various strategies, because we serve and worship a God who

restores his people. But all this verses one, two, and three,

all this focus on the past, God's past restoration is just a primer,

is just priming up the well, preparing you for what actually the Psalm is

wanting to teach us, and that is to encourage us today to keep looking

to the God who restores, to keep looking to the God who continues to

restore. So if first first point point one was look at God's past restoration,

in the second half of the Psalm, the point is count on God's

ongoing work of restoration. Count on God's ongoing work of restoration. We see

this in verses four, five, and six. The restoration that the Psalmist

speaks of from the past is a restoration that continues to work itself out in

the present. The people of Israel, if this is talking about the time

when they came out of captivity from the Babylonian exile. You remember the books

of Ezra and Nihemiah. Yes, they were restored back to the land,

but the worker restoration was not done. Minor prophets came that helped them just

realign the people of God to God's ways and the people needed. They were

ongoingly in need of God's restoration until you will culminate. And the reality is

you and I are in a similar stage. We've experienced God's restoration in the

past in Jesus Christ, but it just feels like it's not over yet.

There's still more that we are waiting to be restored. So in this time

of waiting for the culmination of God's restoration, keep asking God, look to

him and ask him to restore you. And that's what verse four. Restore

our fortunes, Oh Lord, restore our fortunes. And we may say,

Lord, you've done it in the past, what other restorations are needing the

present? Well, whatever the Lord started in the past needs to be culminated

and finished, and that's what we're waiting for and praying for in the present.

Restore our fortunes, Oh Lord. And the Psalmist gives two images one

in verse four, and then the other images in verses five and six.

The first image in verse four restore our fortunes like streams in the Negeb.

You and I don't know geography of the Israelite territory, or I didn't know

it until I got into the Psalm and had to look up. What is

then a gift? What are the streams of the Giv? Why are they?

An image and an illustration here? The Negiv region is a southern most

southern part of the country of Israel that connects to the desert area. In

the spring and summertimes, this region goes really dry, so dry that not

only the grass grows yellow. And you know what that looks like, Not

only the grass grows yellow, but the streams of water just go dry.

But in the fall and the winter, when rain begins pouring down in the

northern part of Israel, those streams are filling up with water again, and

sometimes very quickly, so quickly that it feels like a flashing flood. And

in almost within a few days of those rains, of those streams being filled

up again, the vegetation just springs up again, green plants growing up again,

so much so that one of the Bible teachers put it this way.

In the summer the streams of Negiv fail and dry up. But in winter,

after the rains, they are suddenly full of water again and transform that

they give almost from one day to the next into a blooming landscape and fertile

plowland. So the psalmist says, restore our fortunes. So Lord, like

the streams and of the Negiv, every year we see that cycle of the

store of the streams, of the gift coming rushing, and the vegetation growing

green again. Lord, do that again, our friends. Perhaps some of

us need to pray that prayer this morning. Perhaps there's dryness, there's brokenness

in your own life in ways that you remember how it used to be green,

how there used to be live, how there used to be energy in

your soul, how there used to be just motivation to walk with the Lord.

And it feels like you've plateaued, and it feels like there's no hunger

for the Lord. Perhaps you feel dried up in your spiritual life. The

psalm is for you, and the prayer this psalm wants you to pray,

is Lord, restore our fortunes, restore my fortunes. Restore my soul.

Ask the Lord to bring you the restoration that he alone knows how to bring,

To bring seasons of greenness instead of dryingness, to bring seasons of life

instead of deadness. Perhaps some of us need restoration in family relationships, in

our horizontal relationships. Some of us have been living in seasons of dryness in

various facets and areas of our lives. Whatever it is, if you need

God's restoration, don't look for it to yourself, don't look for it to

others around you. Look up to the Lord and say, Lord, restore

our fortunes. You can do it. Would you do it? Like the

streams of the negive? But this psalm ends on a second image, not

only the image of the streams of the Negev. It ends on the image

of a farmer, the image of a man who is sewing and sewing and

sewing, and he's sewing in tears and in weeping. This image has a

different pace. If the streams in the Negev would start coming almost suddenly in

the winter season, the pace of the second image of the farmer is very

different. It's the opposite. The farmer would sew and then he would sew,

and then he would sew again, and then he would wait, and

he would wait. And the joy doesn't come instantly. The joy comes only

at the harvest time. And these images are important for us to put before

us, because there's something powerful about this image of the farmer. It's repeated

twice, And you wonder, in such a short psalm, why would the

psalmist repeat this image twice in two verse, says one in the plural,

the next in the in the singular, it's repeated because what's key about the

farmer? In both of these verses he is sewing despite the weeping. He's

not sewing when it's happy time. He's not sewing when it's comfortable. He's

sewing when he's in tears. He's sewing when he's weeping. Now we don't

know why he's weeping. Is there a family crisis going on in his life?

Has the money run out? Some commentators, so just perhaps this is

the last produce he's got. He doesn't have anything to put on the table,

and yet, instead of enjoying it himself, is putting it to the

ground, sewing it so he has another crop in the next season. We

don't know the reason for the weeping. What's clear he's weeping. But the

important part in this image is that despite the we being and the tears,

this farmer keeps sewing. That's his responsibility. Oh friends, don't let the

sorrows and the frustrations of the present time distract you from doing what God wants

you to do. The sewing in your life, depending on the crisis that

you're going through, may look different, but one of the aspects that is

similar here in the sewing is continue to ask the Lord to do the restoration.

That's the sewing, even in the act of even in the time of

lamenting and sorrow. Oh friends, don't let the tears and the weeping distract

you from asking God and waiting on the Lord to do the restoration. And

when the harvest comes, say, will be shouts of joy. Our part,

on Bible teacher put it, our part is the persevering. We look

to the Lord to do the restoring. Friends, The image of the sewing

and the weep in the weeping communicates that all of us must have the perseverance

and the patience to endure when lamenting the psalm is not dismissing the season of

lamenting, but it's encouraging us not to wallow in the lamenting to the point

where we just throw up our hands and don't do anything. Turn to the

Lord when you don't know what else to do. Our friends, as one

by both teacher pretty beautifully. So we pray. We pray for streams and

then a give. We pray for a sudden flash flood, transforming dried up

watercourses, marking scorched land into a garden. But in God's providence, following

on his mighty acts Versus one, two and three, the metaphor of the

harvest takes over. There will be songs of joy, but only when the

toilsome task of sowing has been done and the crop has matured for the harvest.

That is where we find ourselves in God's perfect plan of things, And

that is where the Psalm is meeting you and me today. It's with the

image of the farmer. You and I would prefer for the streams of then

a give, I get it. We would prefer the instant at the restoration,

the immediate. God, do it quick. But this psalm is scamping

out on the image of the farmer, the one who's sewing in tears and

says, this is where you're at. Keep sewing and don't despair. The

shouts of joy will come when the harvest time in God's providence will be fulfilled.

Or friends, don't evaluate the worth of your life by the seasons of

tears and weeping. Don't assume it will always be this way. When God

restores his people, shouts of joy are coming with it. He has done

it in the past, he will do it again. Or friends, the

one who who has sown in tears is none none other than the Son of

God. When he came on this earth with a body like ours, fully

human and yet fully God. He's the one who sowed in tears. And

God promised him that what he sows will bring a harvest. And Jesus,

before dying, before going to the cross, he encouraged his disciples who were

weeping and crying, and he said this to them in John sixteen twenty.

Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament,

but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will

turn into joy. You will have sorrow now, but I will see you

again, and your hearts will rejoice. And no one will take your joy

from you. My dear friends, we worship a God who restores. And

whether the restoration you have experienced in the past is just a memory of the

past, and you're in the season when you're longing for God to do it

again, do not despair. He can do it again. He will do

it again. Yes, I get it. You want it to be like

the streams of an negaft quickly, and God says, listen. You might

be like the farmer, put on the expectation that this will be a long

journey. But the shouts of joy will come that you can be certain enough

He's done it in Jesus, he will do do it for you and for

me. We worship a God who restores. He's not like insurance companies.

He's not a lot of contractors who let you down and you have to change

him. He will come through. He restores, and what he restores will

have eternal significance.