Sustaining Christian Joy

Today's scripture reading is from 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 streams 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 sheaves with him.

This is the word of the Lord.

We're so thankful for the gathering this morning.

We just ask you to prepare our hearts for what you have for it this morning.

Teach us from your word.

Father, we just lift up uh Brother Michael here to bring your word to us this morning.

Just give him confidence and let your words flow through him to us, your flock, your children.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

It's moments like this where you're like, do I call attention to it or not?

I'll call attention to it.

Yes, I was just leading worship a moment ago.

Yes, I broke a string in the first song.

That's why you bring a backup acoustic.

Yes, I did a quick wardrobe change.

No, I did not.

I did not.

For those of you who may not know me, my name is Michael Gerardo.

I have the great privilege of serving as one of the pastors here in this morning.

Uh thankful, delighted that I get to preach God's word.

We're going to be in Psalm 126 as we just read a moment ago.

So if you have a Bible, I want to invite you to begin to turn there, turn there with me.

If Psalm 63 last week was taught us how to worship God, right?

How to commune with Him, how to be satisfied in Him, regardless of the circumstances we face, well then Psalm 126 this morning will instruct us on being joyful in the face of hardship and suffering.

Psalm 126 will teach us how to sustain Christian joy through the sorrows of life.

Now to say that the theme of joy saturates the pages of the Bible is a vast understatement.

The word itself, joy, occurs over 150 times.

But when you include the other terms associated with it, like rejoicing or being glad, as we see in our Psalm this morning, we find that there are nearly 400 references, references that span both the Old and the New Testament.

Not only that, we find it in every literary genre in the Bible, from the narratives to the poetry books, the prophets, the gospels, and the epistles.

Joy covers the pages of the Bible from cover to cover.

Now, what's interesting about joy is the fact that on one hand, joy is described in Scripture as a feeling.

It's an emotion.

It's something that we experience in direct correlation to our circumstances.

But on the other hand, we also find that joy is commanded in Scripture.

In other words, joy is not just an emotion we feel, it's an action.

An action that in some sense is completely disconnected from our feelings.

So joy is an emotion, but it's also an orientation of the heart.

With that in mind, perhaps it's best to describe joy in this way.

You'll see this definition on the screen.

Joy is a settled state of contentment, confidence, and hope in the Lord.

A settled state of contentment, confidence, and hope.

And what?

Don't miss the preposition here, in the Lord.

See, joy is a settled state, meaning joy is unmovable.

It should be unshaken because rather than being dependent on circumstances, it's firmly rooted in that which never changes, the perfect character of God.

Joy is settled, a settled state of contentment, right?

It's being satisfied in God regardless of our station in life.

Joy is a settled state of confidence.

It's unwavering in its trust in God regardless of what we face, including hardships and suffering.

It's a settled state of hope because it never loses sight of our settled future, that we belong to God and that he will eventually make all things new.

Again and again, Christian joy is rightly rooted in the Lord.

It finds its contentment, its confidence and hope in him and him alone, and therefore it's a settled state of the heart.

And here's the question I want to wrestle with this morning.

The question that Psalm 126 wrestles with, one that we've all wrestled with at one point or another in our life.

How is Christian joy sustained through the sorrows of life?

How is Christian joy sustained through sorrow?

When the sun has disappeared and the dark clouds have emerged over us like an afternoon thunderstorm, many that we experienced this week.

How is the joy of the Lord sustained even in those moments?

When the dark clouds have emerged over your marriage, and it's given way to conflict and arguments, frustrations, hostility between you and your spouse.

When the dark clouds have emerged over your health, giving way to sickness, pain, hospital stays, surgeries, prolonged treatments.

When the dark clouds emerge over the state of the world, giving way to wars and rumors of wars and famines and political strife, hate, anger, violence.

When the dark clouds emerge, because they will, when the dark clouds emerge and they are bent on stripping us of our joy, how in the world can it be sustained?

That's the question Psalm 126 helps us to answer.

And it does so by giving us three specific means.

I don't know why scripture always does that, but it's always three.

Faithfully remembering, boldly praying, and tearfully waiting.

Remembering, praying, and waiting.

With that being said, let's jump into our text and let's consider each of these in turn.

So, how is Christian joy sustained through the sorrows of life?

Answer number one, we faithfully remember with celebration-filled gladness.

We faithfully remember.

It doesn't take much to notice that this psalm is broken up into two equal parts.

Look down at your Bible, and your translation has most likely grouped verses one through three, and then verses four through six, right?

The psalm is split in half.

Verses one through three are looking backward to the past, while the second half, verses four through six, are looking forward to the future.

Or perhaps we could say it this way.

And the question is, what do we do in the present, right?

The only way to truly make sense of what's taking place in this psalm is to understand its context.

Context is keen.

Look back at verse one.

The psalmist begins and he says, When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

Now, there's some debate among scholars regarding the exact event that the psalmist is referring to here, but many believe that this is a post-exilic psalm.

Fancy word for just meaning this was written after the Babylonian exile.

That still may not mean much to you.

So, quick history lesson, just for a moment, 30 seconds.

Here's a quick history of Israel in the Old Testament.

God makes a covenant with Israel.

He says, You will be my treasured possession among all the nations.

All right, but this covenant comes with a condition: blessing for obedience and judgment for disobedience.

And how does Israel respond?

We know the story.

Again and again, they turn from the Lord.

And God responds just as he promised.

He raises up nations as instruments of his judgment.

So we find that first the Assyrians they conquer the northern tribes of Israel.

Then the Babylonians swoop in and they overthrow the southern tribes.

They destroy Jerusalem, they burn the temple, and they remove God's people from the promised land.

And Israel spends 70 long, hard years in exile.

70 years as captives in a foreign land until God raises up another nation.

The Persian Empire conquers the Babylonians, and then in 538 BC, King Cyrus signs an edict allowing the people of Israel, the Jews, to return back to their land.

All right, history lesson over.

This is the event that the psalmist records in these verses.

He says, When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

Seventy years separated from their home, only hoping, wishing, praying, dreaming of one day returning to their land.

And here they are, finally, back in the promised land.

It was almost too good to be true.

It was a reversal of their fortunes.

The Lord restored Israel back to their land.

Verse 2 then says, Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongues with what?

Shouts of joy.

You can almost imagine the scene after 70 years.

They're back in the land.

Music fills the streets.

The people are singing and dancing, shouting with joy.

In captivity, their mouths were filled with cries of sorrow, but now their mouths are filled with laughter.

This is nothing short of a full-blown celebration.

Think about your favorite team winning the Super Bowl, the NBA championship.

They come to your city, everyone's out, waiting to meet them, screaming, rejoicing.

That's what's taking place here.

Verse 2 then ends with the psalmist remarking, Then they said, Among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them.

The surrounding nations looked on in amazement at their restoration, and they're left concluding, only God could do such a thing.

The Lord has done great things for them.

Here's the thing we need to keep in mind.

This is the psalmist looking back.

See, those days of singing and dancing, they're long gone.

It didn't take long for the bleak reality to set in.

Returning to their land was not as easy as they expected it to be.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah record how difficult those years were.

The road to reconstructing the city would be fraught with hardship and suffering.

The task of rebuilding the temple would be met with constant opposition by new enemies who now inhabited Jerusalem.

Yes, they were back in the land, praise God.

But the road to rebuilding would be marked by difficulty to say the least.

The dark clouds had re-emerged, the circumstances had once again turned on them, and the fight for joy was now at hand.

How would their joy be sustained through this reality?

And the answer is faithfully remembering.

Look at verse 3.

The psalmist goes from speaking in past tense, right?

When the Lord restored our fortunes, then our mouth was filled with laughter, then they said among the nations.

But in verse 3, the psalmist now speaks in the present tense.

Verse 3, he says, The Lord has done great for things for us.

We are glad.

The Lord has past tense, looking to the past, done great things for us.

We are present here now glad.

Meaning, even in the midst of their current sorrow, even in their hardship, the people of God look back on their past experiences in order that it may sustain their joy in the present.

Perhaps we could say it this way to simplify it.

Faithfully remembering God's joy in the past enables us to experience his joy in the present.

Faithfully remembering God's joy in the past, even now in the present hardship and struggling, enables us to experience his joy here and now.

Remembering, church, remembering sustains our joy.

This is one of the many reasons why we find the theme of remembering the Lord so prominent throughout Scripture.

The word remember is found 169 times throughout the Bible, which should make us wonder why in the world is this theme so important to God?

Why does he put it in his word so often?

Well, in short, it's because we are a forgetful people.

We are a forgetful people.

And listen, church, forgetful people are robbed of God's joy.

Forgetful people are robbed of joy.

So here are just a few examples we find in Scripture.

Deuteronomy 4, you'll see these verses on the screen.

A book where this theme of remembering shows up continually.

Verse 9, Moses says, Only take care, Israel, take care, keep yourself diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen.

Unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life.

Make them known to your children and your children's children.

So not only are we called to remember the Lord, but we're instructed to recount God's goodness and faithfulness to our children.

The prophet Isaiah, he records God's own words to Israel and he says this, remember this, God says.

Remember the former things of old, for I am God.

Remember it, Israel.

Remember the ways that you've experienced me providing for you.

Remember the ways that I've proven myself to you, my faithfulness.

Remember the way that I delivered you from Egypt.

Remember that I alone am God.

The Psalms themselves are filled with imperatives commanding us to remember.

We just read one of those in Psalm 103 for our call to worship.

The psalmist says, What?

Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all his benefits.

The one who forgives you, the one who heals you, the one who redeems you, the one who crowns you, the one who satisfies you.

Remember not his or forget not his benefits.

Right, these are just three.

Three of the nearly 200 times that the word of God instructs us to remember.

To remember the countless ways he's proven his faithfulness, not just to Israel, but to us.

Right?

Today, this morning, the Lord calls out to us yet again.

He says, Heartland church, remember.

Recall it to mind, forget not his benefits.

Again, why are we commanded?

Because we are forgetful.

Right?

Forgetfulness is the natural state of our minds, especially the older you get.

Forgetting is easy, not just because we're forgetful, but because our minds immediately move on to whatever's next.

Forgetting is easy, but remembering on the other hand, remembering takes effort.

Remembering takes deliberate action.

Remembering is saying, I'm going to choose to stop my mind from being overwhelmed with the present.

I'm gonna stop my mind from being crushed with worry about the future.

Forgetting the present, forgetting the future.

It's to stop ourselves long enough here, now in the present, to honestly reflect on that which God has done, to look back and to specifically list the ways God has shown up in your life.

See, in one Psalm 126, the psalmist isn't being vague, is he?

He isn't recounting the attributes of God and generalities.

No, he's being personal.

He's being specific and he's being descriptive.

He's allowing his mind to go back to that specific moment in time, almost as if he's reliving it.

As if he were to close his eyes hard enough, he can actually hear the laughter again.

He can see the people dancing in his mind.

And the reason he's going back to the past is so that it might inform his present.

He's going to the past and he's allowing it to actively change how he views his current experience.

In essence, he's borrowing joy from the past and applying it to the hardship in the present.

And the outcome of his faithful remembering is an unwaving experiential statement.

He says, the Lord has done great things for us, so we are glad.

Now we have been glad, not just we will be glad, but right here, but right now, we are glad.

So the question for us this morning is church, what has the Lord done in your life?

How has he shown up?

Not in general ways, be specific.

In personal ways, how has he shown up in your life?

How has he provided for you in times of need?

How has he kept you safe when you've encountered danger?

What situations has he rescued from rescued you from?

How has he personally, specifically shown you his goodness?

How has he proven his faithfulness time and time again?

How has he proven that he loves you?

How has he shown you his grace and his mercy?

How has he led you and counseled you in difficult moments?

How have you seen the providence of God at work in your life and we could go on and on and ask questions?

The call for us this morning is to look back and remember.

Again, not in vague ways, but as a psalmist does specifically, be descriptive.

Stop long enough so that your mind is not overwhelmed with the present.

Stop your heart from being crushed with worry about the future.

Stop long enough today, this week, to go back and remember.

So that today we can join our voices with the psalmist and say the Lord has done great things for us.

So we are glad.

Even in the midst of whatever's currently going on in your life, faithfully remembering, church sustains our joy in sorrow.

All right, so we're answering the question: how is Christian joy sustained through the sorrows of life?

Here's the second answer we find in this psalm.

We boldly pray, faith-filled prayers.

We boldly pray.

Look back at the text with me.

Verse 4, the psalmist goes from remembering to praying, and here's his simple prayer, just one sentence.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negab.

The request is simple.

Restore our fortunes.

And then the psalmist makes a comparison, like streams in the Negeb.

And again, understanding this verse requires context.

This phrase means nothing to us who live in South Haven, Mississippi.

I don't normally show images on the screen during sermons, but I think this might be helpful to us this morning.

You'll see this first picture on the screen.

The Negeb is this massive desert in the southern region of Israel.

It's just east of the Sahara Desert.

The Hebrew word for its name literally means dry or parched.

So as you can imagine, this part of Israel receives little to no rain at all, especially between the months of June and October.

It's hot, barren, dry.

But here's what's fascinating.

Even a small amount of rain, as little as one inch of rain in the northern highlands, can create flash floods throughout this desert.

Just a little bit of rain can create these torrential storms that are known for being forcefully destructive.

You'll see this next picture.

This is just a picture of some of these storms.

And these storms can create floods that destroy roads and collapse bridges, at times, even taking the lives of people who are caught in the wake of their destructive power.

This continues to happen to this very day.

But here's what I want us to see.

I want us to focus on the aftermath of these floods.

You'll see this final image on the screen.

After the rain has fallen, after the flash floods have receded, here's what's left.

Of water where they don't belong, in the middle of the desert.

All of a sudden, this desert, dry land is flowing with streams of water.

This is what the psalmist is referring to when he prays and he says, Restore us, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb.

The psalmist is equating their current circumstance to that of being in a barren, parched, dry, hot land, like a like a weary land where there is no water, like David said last week in Psalm 63.

In essence, what the psalmist is crying out in this verse, if I could translate his prayer is, God make it rain.

Lord, provide the waters, open the heavens, let it pour out, bring forth flash floods, so that our desert may be filled yet again with streams of water.

Restore us, O Lord.

But here's what I don't want us to miss.

This is one of those verses that remind us of the importance of proper punctuation.

When used properly, punctuation brings clarity to the meaning of a sentence.

And in the case of an exclamation point, as we find here, it helps us understand the tone and the force behind a statement.

What we find in verse 4 in this prayer isn't just a simple request, right?

This is a cry of desperation.

This is a grief-filled plea for God's deliverance.

It's a plea that flows from a heart that is lamenting the sad reality that the people of God find themselves.

The shouts of joy have been replaced with cries of lament.

Most commentators refer to this section of Psalm 126 as a community lament.

A lament is just a specific formal category of psalms that express grief or sorrow in the form of a prayer.

Prayers that often communicate doubt and anger toward God.

Prayers that are punctuated with honest questions that in many ways come across as the psalmist impugning God's character.

They're the type of prayers, honestly, that at times make us uncomfortable to read.

Not Psalm 126, but go read some of the Psalms of Lament in your Bible.

They make you blush and they make you wonder: can I actually speak to God in this way?

And there are several things that the Psalms of Lament share in common.

Most include phrases of doubt, they include complaints, piercing questions, and most include, like Psalm 126, bold requests of God.

In these prayers, the writers take their frustration, they take their sadness and their anger, and it creates in them this desperation that allows them to be blunt, honest, concise, and direct with their prayer.

So much so that at times the requests come across as if they're demanding God to act rather than humbly asking God for mercy.

The psalmist says, Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev.

It's not a question or even a simple request.

It comes across as a desperate plea for God to act.

But make no mistake about it, these are not pride-filled, arrogant claims on God to bend to the will of the lamentor.

No, they are bold, faithful prayers, prayers that not only reflect the desperation of the one praying, but prayers that also reflect the power and the character of the one being prayed to.

In other words, the reason these prayers are bold and faith-filled is because they recognize the one to whom they are praying to.

The psalmist is convinced of the character and power of God.

The character and power of God and both, church, listen, both are essential in praying, both faith-filled prayers.

See, we know that God is powerful.

What good is God's power to us if he wasn't steadfast in his love and his faithfulness?

You see, it's because we know his character, because we know that he is good, that we can have faith that he will use his power on behalf of his people.

And it's only when we're convinced of both that we can be emboldened like the psalmist.

It's only when we're convinced of his character and power that we can say, restore us, O Lord.

We're praying, God, make it rain in our lives, open the heavens, bring the flash floods, provide the waters, streams in the desert.

We're saying, Lord, you restored us once, so we believe that you will do it again.

Why can the psalmist pray like this?

Because he's convinced of who God is.

So, church, I want to ask you the question this morning Are you convinced of who God is?

Are you convinced of his power?

Are you convinced that he can do whatever it is that you're asking of him?

Do you believe in his power?

Then, secondly, are you convinced of his character?

Think about it.

Think about whatever hardship you're going through this morning.

Because it's so easy to answer this in the abstract.

Consider whatever sorrow you're facing and ask yourself, do you believe that God is good?

Do you believe that he's for you?

Do you believe that he continues to hear your prayers?

Do you believe that he attends to your your pain?

That he cares about your sorrow.

Do you believe that he's granted you divine permission to bring him your complaints, your doubts, your questions, your frustrations, your anger, your hurt, your sadness, and yes, even your requests?

Are you convinced this morning of who God is?

And the only way to properly answer that question is to consider your prayer life.

What types of prayers are you praying to God this morning?

See, the invitation from the Lord today is to bring him our bold, faith-filled prayers that in turn he may sustain your joy.

I love how James Montgomery Boy summarizes these realities.

He writes this in his commentary.

You'll see this quote on the screen.

He says, In Psalm 126, the memory of those singing, laughter-filled days of the past become not nostalgia, but the ground of a strong hope for even better days to come.

This is not just wishful thinking, pie in the sky Christianity.

It is a strong, realistic Christianity because it is based on the character of God.

God is good, he is unchanging in his goodness, and he has granted us wonderful joys in the past.

Therefore, he can be counted on to give us wonderful days again.

Church, may we never tire of bringing our requests to God.

But may we do so boldly and filled with faith, because we know the one to whom we are praying to.

We're convinced of his power, and we're convinced of his character.

So remembering leads us to praying, and then finally, praying leads us to waiting.

Here's the last thing we see in this text.

How is Christian joy sustained through sorrow?

By tearfully waiting with hope-filled expectation.

Tearfully waiting.

Look back at the text with me one last time.

In verse 5, the psalmist says, 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.

The psalmist now paints a picture for us, an agricultural example of a farmer faithfully sowing seed.

And the farmer has one objective in mind, to grow his crops, right?

But in order to do so, the farmer has to faithfully adhere to the process necessary for growing crops.

This includes plowing, sowing, irrigating, and finally harvesting.

And so the farmer faithfully plows his field.

He prepares the ground for the crop.

The farmer faithfully sows his seed.

He goes out spreading, uh spreading the seed all over his field.

And one day, hopefully, the faithful farmer will harvest his crops.

But see, there's one thing that farmers of antiquity couldn't do: something out of control, providing the waters necessary to grow their crops.

Right?

Farmers were dependent on rain.

Without rain, no harvest.

At the end of the day, ancient farmers had to rely on God to provide rain for their crops to grow.

In essence, after faithfully doing their part, sowing the seed, they simply had to wait.

Waiting.

There's an activity we all love to do, said no one ever, right?

We all hate having to wait.

We hate having to wait because not only are we a forgetful people, as we mentioned earlier, but because we're also an impatient people, we don't know how to wait.

Waiting irritates us, it frustrates us, it makes us angry, and technology has only made it worse.

Technology has discipled us, meaning it has shaped and formed us to be the types of people who expect everything and anything we want to be received immediately.

Here's just one silly example.

Just 25 years ago, most of us didn't have high-speed internet.

Some of us still remember the sound of dial up.

But now we all have phones in our back pockets with 5G.

And if you're anything like me, if you're opening up an app or you're trying to load a website and it takes five seconds, not five minutes, just five seconds to open.

We're huffing and puffing.

Why?

Because we've grown accustomed to the immediacy, the speed of technology, and it has slowly but surely eroded our little ability to be patient.

Now overlay that impatience that we've developed over time onto our spiritual lives, and the results are devastating.

When we cry out to God and He doesn't respond, when our prayers are seemingly met with silence, when our pleas for God to speak seem to be ignored, we immediately do what?

Panic.

Why?

Because we don't know how to wait.

See, we expect God to respond to the bold, faithful prayer in verse 4 immediately, when all too often God desires instead to meet us in the waiting.

We want God to respond immediately, but as much as we hate it, he would much rather meet us in the waiting.

And here's why.

He says, You need to know, you need to be convinced of this, Christian.

You'll see this quote on the screen.

He says that lament doesn't always lead us to an immediate solution.

It does not always bring a quick or timely answer.

Lament is not a simplistic formula.

Instead, I love this.

He says, Lament is the song you sing, believing that one day God will answer and restore.

Lament allows us to embrace an endurance that is not passive.

Lament helps us to practice active patience.

Finally, he ends and he says, trust looks like talking to God, sharing our complaints, seeking God's help, and then recommitting ourselves to believe in who God is and what he has done, even as the trial continues.

Church, lament is how we endure.

Lament is how we trust.

It is how we wait.

In other words, we keep praying.

We keep lamenting over and over again.

It's the process of lamenting that enables us to wait for the Lord.

We sow in tears, as the psalmist says, convinced of who God is, believing that one day he will answer, one day he will restore.

But in the meantime, in the waiting, we hold on to the truth that God is actively, presently doing a good work in us.

And church, I don't want to paint this over.

Make no mistake about it.

Waiting is difficult.

Waiting is filled with uncertainty that often leads us to doubt and confusion.

Or one of the things that makes waiting so difficult is it that it's met with delays.

When it finally seems like things are beginning to turn for us, we're met with yet another roadblock.

Waiting is met with disappointment after disappointment, continually being let down.

And perhaps worse of all, waiting is accompanied with a complete sense of powerlessness.

Everything is out of our control.

And we hate being powerless.

We hate being weak.

But, church, listen, it's there in the waiting.

Not a passive activity, an active one where we continually cry out to the Lord.

It's there when we choose to turn our eyes away from our circumstance and instead place them on God that we're met with the sustaining joy of the Lord, because it's there that we're met yet again with his hope.

See, don't miss the hope-filled expectancy of verses five and six.

Yes, these are verses filled with tears.

They're filled with sorrow, they're filled with pain and suffering, but they're also filled with hope.

And it's found in a simple five-letter word, shall.

Shall.

Look back at verses five and six.

The psalmist says, those who sow in tears, right?

Those who bring their tear-filled sorrows to the Lord, those who bring their pain and suffering to God, those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.

He who goes out bearing or weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy.

After the tears, after the long, hard, painful work of sowing seed and waiting on the Lord, the farmer finally reaps his harvest.

There's a hope-filled expectancy because the farmer knows who he is waiting for.

Against, again, he's he's convinced of his power, of God's power and character.

And so he knows he will once again be filled with joy.

Eugene Peterson captures this beautifully when he writes the following.

He says, All suffering, all pain, all emptiness, all disappointment is seed.

Sow it in God, and he will finally bring a crop of joy from it.

Church, what are we doing with our suffering this morning?

What are we doing with our pain?

What are we doing with our sorrow?

What what are you currently doing with whatever situation it is in your life that is continually bringing tears to your eyes?

What are you doing with your disappointment?

Disappointment.

In other words, are we hoping for the thing being prayed about to change, to turn, or are we hoping in the one we are praying to?

And the answer is often found in our disposition.

Is our waiting one of hope-filled expectancy?

Or is it absolute despair?

The in our waiting.

We may not always get what we want, but God will always be faithful to give us what we need.

His joy.

Again, the ultimate answer to our prayer isn't the thing we're longing for, it's the one we're praying to.

And he is always faithful to give us more of himself.

And the outcome, without exception, every single time, is shouts of joy.

So this morning, may we choose to bring him our suffering.

May we choose to bring him our pain.

May we choose to bring him our disappointments, our tears, and may we sow it in God, believing that he will finally bring a crop of joy from it.

See, at times, if we're not careful, we can read the Psalms and entirely miss the gospel.

After all, they were written hundreds, in some cases thousands of years before Jesus.

But as Christians, we read all of Scripture in light of his life, death, and resurrection.

And in reality, the psalmist would write these psalms in longing and anticipation for the Messiah.

They're always Christ-centered.

So the call this morning for us to faithfully remember must begin and end with the gospel.

It begins with a recognition of what God has done in our behalf, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That you and I were once enemies of God, but now we've been made children of God.

That we were once bound to the kingdom of darkness, but now we've been transferred to the kingdom of the beloved Son.

Remember that we were once dead in our sins and trespasses, that we were by nature children of wrath, as Ephesians 2 says.

But God, God being rich in mercy, because of the great love he has for us, even when we were dead in our sins, made us alive together with Christ's church.

This is the ultimate restoration of fortunes.

And so indeed, this morning we can say the Lord has done great things for us.

We are glad.

And if he chose, as I've said before, if he chose to do nothing else in our lives, we would still have plenty of reasons to eternally rejoice.

But not only do we remember the cross of Christ, we also recognize that it's because of the gospel that you and I can bold pray bold, faith-filled prayers.

It's because of what Christ has done for us that we have access to the Father.

The reason we have confidence to pray like the psalmist, restore us, Lord, is because of the blood of Jesus.

It's because we now have an advocate who intercedes on our behalf that we can draw near God in full assurance of faith.

We have been granted to come and pray.

We have been given divine permission to come to the throne of grace, knowing that we will find mercy, with the assurance that we will find grace in time of need.

So we don't pray timid prayers.

We don't pray as outsiders with fingers crossed, hoping God will hear us.

No, we come as beloved sons and daughters, crying out, Abba Father.

Why?

Because in Christ we have been adopted into the family of God, and because of the blood of Christ, we have access to the presence of God.

And finally, it's the gospel that enables us to endure with hope to the very end, to tearfully wait with hope-filled expectation, because it's the finished work of Christ that has caused us to be born again to a living hope, as 1 Peter says.

A real hope, church, a future that is secure, and an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for us, which means when we walk through seasons of sorrow, when we're sowing our tears, we're not aimlessly waiting.

We're waiting with expectation.

We know how the story ends.

And though we do not see him now, we believe in him and we rejoice, as 1 Peter 1 says, even in the waiting, we rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory as we press on toward the final salvation of our souls.

Church, it's Christ that enables us to faithfully remember.

It's Christ that enables to boldly pray.

And it's Christ that enables us to tearfully wait.

So may we place our trust in him today, knowing that he will sustain our joy to the very end.

Let's pray.

Lord, even as I'm preaching this sermon, I'm constantly in the back of my mind speaking to myself, saying, Lord, help me to believe this truth.

Lord, help me to walk in it.

And so I pray the same for our church this morning.

At times it's easy to look at a text and draw out truth.

It's so much harder to apply it to our lives.

And so, Lord, I pray for your bride, your people, your flock, your sheep here at Heartland Church.

Help us, Lord, this week to remember, to go back and consider the ways that you have been good and kind and faithful and gracious and merciful to us.

Oh, may we not be forgetful people who are always robbed of joy.

No, help us to dig deep into the past and to drag that joy into the present today, here and now.

God, help us to be faithful to pray bold-filled prayers.

Oftentimes, in our weariness, we just stop praying.

Or we ask, or we we come to you and we ask things of you as if as if there's no way you're actually gonna do it.

Oh God, fill us with faith to pray bold boldly, and yet at the end of the day, help us to wait on you, Lord.

In our impatience, meet us again and again.

Sustain our joy this morning.

We ask and pray in the name of Jesus.

So that the watching world could see us even in our hardships and in our suffering and say, What is it about them?

That we might say the Lord has done great things for us.

So we are glad.

We ask and pray this all in the name of Jesus.

And the church says, Amen.

Amen.