Those Were the Days

Guest (Male): To the Israelites, it was like a dream, a joy indescribable. After years of captivity in a foreign land, they were free and returning to their beloved Zion. The people's hearts were filled with anticipation and prayers for the future. Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. It's difficult for anyone to understand the delirious joy that filled the hearts of the Jews as they returned from Babylon. They were no longer captives, and they were on their way home. Their future had been restored, and it was all right there before them. Join Dr. Boice as he studies Psalm 126, a Psalm of joy, anticipation, and prayer for the future of a people and a nation as they return to Zion.
Dr. James Boice: We're studying the Psalms together. The Psalms are poetry, and one of the techniques of effective poetry is the use of sharp, contrasting illustrations. I think of a number of examples, but you could probably think of many thousands of them without much effort. For example, John Milton has blind Samson say in *Samson Agonistes*, just after he has been blinded by the Philistines, "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, irrecoverably dark, total eclipse without all hope of day." Or again, this is the way Shakespeare begins *Richard III*. Richard himself is speaking before he becomes king. He is speaking about the new king of the family of York, and he begins this way: "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York." That is what we have in Psalm 126, a very sharp and a very effective contrast. This is the seventh of these fifteen Songs of Ascent, songs that the pilgrims apparently sang as they made their way up to Jerusalem for one of the three annual feasts. It begins with a song, or moment, or description of what is almost delirious joy. It's a scene from Israel's past when the Jews were suddenly released from their captivity in Babylon and were on their way back to their own land. Having described that effectively in the first stanza, the second stanza jumps to the present time, which is not at all a time of delirious joy but rather a time of hardship and great difficulty. It describes these hard times. It also contains, as it does that, a prayer for better times and also a prophecy or prediction of better times to come. So that's the general substance of what we have. Let's think about this first stanza and ask this question: Can we really appreciate the opening stanza? I think that's not a very easy thing to do because not many of us have experienced anything quite as deliriously joyful as this is. These people had been released from what they must have considered a hopeless, seventy-year-long captivity. God had suddenly intervened. One moment they were slaves, the next moment they were free. They were able to go home. As they look back on it, they said, "It just seemed like we were dreaming. We couldn't believe that it was true. It was just so wonderful we could hardly find expression to it." And so they say, "Our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with songs of joy." Even the Gentiles noticed it. The nations roundabout said, "This is an extraordinary thing. It must have been done for them by their God." And so they echo that, and they say, "Yes, yes, it was God. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy." Now, have any of us ever experienced anything quite like that? Well, perhaps, or in some measure. For some people, falling in love is like that. The heart is filled with joy, and one can hardly find the words to express the happiness within. But the difference there is that usually that does not follow a time of severe oppression or persecution, certainly not slavery. How about recovery from some serious illness? Certainly we're joyful that that has happened, but usually it doesn't have the suddenness that's involved in this particular stanza because recoveries are often quite slow. We're cautious about it. We're thankful, but we're still progressing as it were on the way to health. And so even our recovery is treated somewhat seriously. We're a little bit like the prisoner of Chillon in Byron's poem, who at the very end we're told regained his freedom with a sigh. I suppose the closest thing to what we have in this stanza is some people's experience of conversion, especially if they were converted later in life and perhaps after a time of some captivity to sin. God has intervened, the past really is gone, and their hearts are filled with joy. They just can't stop finding opportunities to give thanks and praise to God. The problem, of course, is that exceptional joy like that, we have to be quite honest here, usually doesn't last forever, and sometimes it's only for a very short time. It has to be that way, of course, because we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a sinful world, which always contains a combination of ecstasy and agony, joy and sorrow, good times and bad times. I've referred from time to time in this series on the Songs of Ascent to Eugene Peterson's book on the Psalms, and he defines joy very effectively at one point. He calls it a product of abundance, the overflow of vitality, life working together harmoniously. He acknowledges that it's God's good gift to His children, but He adds honestly, "Inadequate sinners as we are, none of us can manage that for very long." The people whose experience is being described in this Psalm didn't manage it for very long, did they? They were filled with exuberant joy when they were set free from their captivity in Babylon and were free to return home. But once they got there, they found that they had to settle down to the very difficult work of establishing themselves in their own land, rebuilding the temple, reconstituting their culture, and building homes. The books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah tell how difficult that was and how many disappointments there were. We read, for example, that when they first constructed the temple, they started it, and then they had to abandon it. Then they started it again. Finally, they got it finished, but when they got the temple rebuilt, it wasn't anything like the old temple that had been built by Solomon and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The older Jews among them who looked back on those days and could remember them wept even though the temple was reconstructed. The times that they had in the land pretty soon turned out to be difficult and discouraging. Now, that's the first stanza. We go to the second stanza, and here's something we can identify with easily because here we're brought face-to-face with the disappointments that often come. What are we supposed to think about here? Well, I suppose we could think about superficial things of our youth that were wonderful times as we think back on them. Slumber parties for young girls, college weekends, perhaps wonderful family vacations at the shore or something like that. But this is a pilgrim song; we're dealing here with spiritual things. Let's think of spiritual joys and how they are quite often lost. How about the joy of our salvation, first of all? That's a very important thing. And as I said a moment ago, those who are converted later in life, especially after some bondage to some sin or some ignorance that has captivated their minds for a long time and suddenly by the grace of God have that broken, are filled with joy. They're talking about it all the time, and they become great witnesses. It's why new Christians so often are the most effective evangelists as they just tell their friends and their neighbors and co-workers and everything about the Lord. But it is often the case, isn't it, I would say generally, maybe universally the case, that that doesn't last, at least at that level, forever. What happens, of course, is that it settles down and we begin to enter upon the Christian life, and we're deepened in our understanding of God and trust, but that's not quite the same as that early exuberant joy. Even the great John Wesley at one point in one of his hymns wrote the line, "Where is the joy I knew when once I saw the Lord?" The loss of that initial joy doesn't mean that the person is no longer a Christian; of course they are. But it's still difficult to live through hard times when something that we did have and valued greatly seems to be gone. Let me give another example: How about the joy of some great spiritual victory? This gets us further on into the Christian life. Suppose in your own experience, as you look back, there was something that was holding you back, some sin that at the beginning you weren't even aware of. But as God began to work in your heart, it was something that began to be clear to you and you realized this needed to be changed. You didn't think you could ever change it; it just seemed to hold you in its power. But suddenly, God worked and there was what we would call today a breakthrough. Oh, how happy you were that God had worked in such a powerful way in your life. But then you soon discovered that it wasn't the only sin that was holding you back. And as you began to go on in your Christian life, you soon came up against something else, and you sort of went through the same thing all over again. And so you lose the joy of that salvation. How about the joy of Christian fellowship? Christian fellowship's a wonderful thing. It's probably the closest thing that we have in this life to the joy of heaven. But you can lose it in a number of ways. The person that you're closest to, for example, can die, and all of us experience that sooner or later. Sometimes sin disrupts a relationship. It can be very destructive, and you never quite get back together the thing that you had initially. Sin can disrupt whole churches and destroy ministries. Or sometimes it's just as simple a thing as the people that you're close to being relocated because of their job. They move away. You still have a bond with them, but you've lost that regular contact that you valued so much. We speak of the communion of saints. It's a true communion and it bridges even death. We have a communion of saints here with the saints who are in heaven. But nevertheless, there's often a sadness when a kind of earlier fellowship that we had is removed. Or let me give one more example: How about the joy of starting a new work for God? I've had the opportunity over the years of doing that a number of times, launching some new enterprise. There's an awful lot of excitement when you do that, and people come together and they're just so glad that we've got this new thing going and you get all excited. But after you get it going, you find very quickly that it settles down to the hard mechanics of working it all out and difficult labor and sometimes raising the money and all of those things. The question is, you see, what are we to do when the slugging times come? Are we to give up? Are we to merely settle down to what we would call the humdrum of Christian living? Well, here's the point at which Psalm 126 really speaks to us and it tells us something very important. For the Psalmist, as for us, the memory of the past could have become mere nostalgia. He could have said, "Oh my, those were the days. Weren't we happy back then? But well, we're never going to have those days again." That's not what he does. The Psalmist doesn't do that at all. The reason he doesn't do that is because he and his people are in a relationship to God, and God has not changed. God is a good God. He has been good in the past, He is good in the present, He'll be good in the future, and therefore he is sure that because he had good times in the past, he will have good times again. That's the Christian hope, you see. That's what keeps him from settling down to the humdrum in despair or discouragement. Now, when you look at this second stanza, you find two things. He does two things, they're both significant. First of all, he prays. That is to say, he asks God for the good times again. Verse 4: "Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev." Now the Negev is a desert. It's that southern area when you go on south beyond Hebron and so forth. It's a very barren area. It has water from time to time because there are gullies there, but in almost any season of the year when you travel in the Negev, you find that the gullies are absolutely dry, parched, barren, hot, and comfortless. But then there's a season of the year when you get rains, and the rains come to the highlands from the north. All of the little trickles of water feed into rivulets and the rivulets into gullies. Finally, all of that comes coursing down into the Negev, and for a very short time, suddenly there's refreshing and abundant water. Now, the Psalmist is saying, "Lord, you blessed us that way in the past, bless us that way again. Suddenly, surprise us with your goodness." And of course, that is what had happened. I've already described how they were delivered from their captivity in Babylon. The striking thing about that is that it was unexpected and it came suddenly. One day they were slaves, the next day they were free. God had done that, so if he'd done it once, he could do it again, and so they pray and they pray in confidence. That's the first thing the Psalmist does. The second thing, verses 5 and 6, is that he prophesies a time of joy to follow the present time of sorrow. It's natural, of course. He's remembering the past, he's praying in the present, he's praying in confidence, and so he gives a prophecy of these good times to come. Now I call it a prophecy, but that may not be the exact word for it. We usually think of a prophecy as a word from God about something to come that we wouldn't have expected in any way apart from the revelation. It strikes me that it isn't quite that. This is more like a proverb than a prophecy. It kind of fits in with the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. It's a proverb because it's based on the character of God and it deals with general principles. And it's these: It's been a great blessing to God's people over the years. "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy carrying sheaves with him." Now it's worth noticing here the difference between those two images. When he was talking about the Negev and praying for God's blessing, he was thinking in terms of a blessing which is sudden. Suddenly, those dry river valleys fill up with water from the north, unexpected. You don't even know it's going to come. God sometimes operates like that. But here in this proverb or prophecy, whatever you choose to call it, it's not something sudden that he's thinking of but rather it's a blessing, it's still a blessing, it comes from God, but it's a blessing that comes after much hard work and waiting. In other words, what he's talking about here is a strong dose of spiritual reality. He's saying, "Sometimes God does work suddenly. You can pray for that, and God undoubtedly will work suddenly and in an unexpected way again, but most of the time, God works as a result of our working, and the fact that God is going to work and that we are encouraged to pray is not an excuse for us to fail to do what God has called us to do right now." So what is the message of this Psalm? Well, it has three parts. Number one, remember the past and be encouraged by it. Number two, keep praying. And number three, keep working because the Lord who gives us work to do also sends the harvest. Now, I suppose we could leave it at that point, but I want to draw two applications that are meant for encouragement. The first one picks up on this matter of sowing seed and expecting a harvest, and it links it up with that well-known parable of our Lord found in the first section of Matthew 13. Jesus is talking about a farmer who goes out to sow seed, and he points out that as he sows the seed, it falls on different kinds of soil. Some of it just falls on the path where the ground has been trampled down. It lies there, and pretty soon the birds come along and eat it up. Some of it falls in the shallow soil, springs up quickly, but because the soil is shallow, it is unable to take root. As soon as the sun comes out, it's scorched, and so it perishes and does no good. Some of the seed falls into good soil and springs up, but there are thorns there, and they're growing too, and pretty soon the thorns choke out the good seed. And then he said only some of it falls on good soil where it brings forth a harvest, a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold. The disciples didn't understand what he was talking about. He explained it. He said the seed is the word of God. The various soils represent the hearts of men and women. Some are hard and never even penetrate. Some receive the soil readily, but then it's scorched out as soon as any kind of trouble comes along. Some have the truth of the gospel crowded out by the allurement of the world, the riches and the pressures of our time to get ahead. And only a portion of it, you see, bears fruit. But you see, the encouragement is in that, that a portion of it does bear fruit. Some of this soil does reach seed, a seed does reach good soil, and there it begins to bring forth a harvest. And so it's a great encouragement to those who are teachers of the word, those who actually do the work of evangelism. So the point is that we are not to give up. Paul told the Corinthians, "My dear brothers, stand firm, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." Does it seem in vain? Yes, sometimes it does. That's when we experience the discouragements. But it's not in vain. Nothing that's done for the Lord Jesus Christ is ever overlooked by God, and it will certainly bear fruit. And so we're supposed to be encouraged and keep on. Now here's the last point. It has to do with our labor and our tears, particularly the tears and the fact that they're noticed by God himself. The Greeks had the idea, when they were talking about God, that God could not be touched by any kind of human sorrow. They reasoned this way. They said, "If God could be moved by anything that we experience, then to that extent we would have power over God, and we could manipulate God by our sorrows." That may be good philosophy, but it's not good theology. The word the Greeks had for it was *apatheia*. Aristotle made a lot of it in his writings. We get our word apathy from it, but it didn't mean exactly what we mean by apathy. It just meant this immovable character in God. Well, I know that we can't manipulate God. God is sovereign. God will do what God will do. But the Bible teaches that God is touched by the feelings of our infirmities. He does notice our tears, and furthermore, he even weeps in a certain sense with us because Jesus himself did. We just read this morning from John 11, the shortest verse in the Bible, one that stands all alone, though it has only two words and deserves our serious meditation: "Jesus wept" when he stood at the tomb of Lazarus over what death does to people and how sin causes death and over unbelief and those things. And also later as he made his way toward Jerusalem, he wept over the city because he said, "You didn't know the hour of your visitation," and he knew what was coming. You see, he is touched because God knows and feels with his people. God knows something else. He knows that one day also those tears are going to be wiped away. So we turn to the last book of the Bible, to Revelation, and here we have a wonderful description of it. John is writing. He's talking about the new heaven and the new earth, the life to come. And here's what he says: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, because the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.'" Pain here? Yes, and suffering? Yes, and disappointment? Yes, and death. But the time is coming when all of that will be gone, and gone forever. I mentioned Eugene Peterson; listen to his summation on this Psalm. "The Psalm," he says, "does not give us joy as a package or a formula, but there are some things it does do. It shows up the tininess of the world's joy and affirms the solidarity of God's joy. It reminds us of the accelerating costs and diminishing returns of those who pursue pleasure as a path toward joy. It introduces us to the way of discipleship which has consequences in joy. It encourages us in the way of faith to both experience and share in joy. It tells the story of God's acts, which put laughter into people's mouths and shouts on their tongues. It repeats the promise of a God who accompanies his wandering, weeping children until they arrive home exuberant, bringing in the sheaves, and it announces the existence of a people who along with whatever else is happening are able to say that at the center we are glad." Those were the days? Yes, and we still have days like that even now, and there are even better days to come. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the hope that we have in Christ and the gospel. None of this would be at all possible for us to think or believe were it not for what you have given us and done for us in Jesus Christ. We look at the world, all we see is the emptiness. We see a false kind of joy which is destined eventually to be consumed by sorrow. But we look to Christ and the gospel and to yourself and your love and your power, and we say, "Oh, not only is there joy to know that now, but there is joy yet to come." So, our Father, encourage us in that and grant that we might live as those who are conducting their whole existence in the light of eternity and with the joy that has its source at the very throne of God. Amen.
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