ADVENT: THE LIGHT OF JOY Psalm 126:1-8
Pastor Dennis Bone
12-17-17
Our theme this Advent season is God’s light, specifically revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” and in Him, the apostle John declares, was life and that life was the light of man. The Psalms reveal and proclaim God’s light through His gracious presence with His people, as they looked forward to Christ’s coming into the world at Advent. Thus as we study the Psalms this Advent season, we are focusing on how God’s light reflects the hope, peace, joy, love, and ultimately the victory we have in Christ, who comes to fulfill the promises of the Psalms; and as the Light of the world He shines the light of salvation into our hearts.
This morning, on the third Sunday of Advent, our focus is on the light of joy. Our text today is Psalm 126; and like last week’s Psalm, Psalm 85, the word light is not found in the passage but the joy that God’s light reflects and provides for His people is. The light of God’s presence with us, specifically revealed in the coming of Christ, provides us with the light of joy. Psalm 126 celebrates this light of joy in a song of joy that God gives to His people. So please follow along as I read Psalm 126: When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the streams in the Negev. 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.
You may have noticed in your Bible that this Psalm is labeled a “song of ascents.” It’s one of the 15 Psalms designated this way, starting with Psalm 120 and going through Psalm 134. This series of Psalms refer to songs of worship used by pilgrims making their ascent or journey up to the temple in Jerusalem, reflecting and expressing their love for God and their experiences of His grace, goodness and faithfulness in their lives. Psalm 126 begins with an expression of dream-like gratitude for God delivering His people from captivity and bringing them a joy that is almost unbelievable or inexpressible; and it continues by praying that this joy be renewed and continued in their lives.
We all want joy, don’t we? The joy that the Psalmist sings about is not designed to be temporary; it’s not to be confused with happiness or someone’s temperament or personality. No, this is the joy of the Lord that is grounded in God’s presence with us, and our experience of His grace in our lives. It’s a song about being freed from the captivity of sin and the consequences of sin that leads to sorrow and frustration and unhappiness in one’s life. This is a place where God’s people often found themselves in the Old Testament. You might be there, or have been there too, because of choices or circumstances that blind you to this joy of the Lord, or hide it from you sight. The darkness of sin gets in the way of our joy. This Psalm is about you seeing the light of God’s joy once again; and staying in this light as you live the Christian life.
So the first main point to consider is this: We praise God for our song of joy. This is what we see in the first three verses of the Psalm. Our song of joy is a song that God gives to us. It’s not a song that you make up on your own or get from your own efforts, but it’s one that God gives us to sing. The Psalmist calls us to remember how God has given you joy in the past.
He says, “When the Lord brought back the captives from Zion” – when God rescued us and saved us from our enemies, due to our sin – “we were like those who dreamed. And our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with songs of joy.” God’s people are reflecting upon and re-living the joy of their redemption. When life gets hard or difficult we must remember the work of God’s gracious salvation in our lives and we rejoice in Him. Has anything ever happened in your life when you said to yourself: “I don’t believe this; it’s like a dream.” It doesn’t seem real because you didn’t expect it. This is the wonder of our salvation, and it’s when we remember the unexpected and undeserving nature of God’s grace in freeing us from the captivity of our sin that we too will sing with joy.
We have short memories, and as a result the whirlwind of life can blow away our joy or get us stuck in the mud of self-centeredness, despair and self-pity. This Psalm is a call to remember that God has given us a song of joy and to praise God for it. These first three verses teach us three things about this song of joy. First, the struggle to remember and to maintain our song of joy. We are a forgetful people; thus we need God to shine the light of His word into our minds. We need to be reminded of the great things God has done for us. This is the main theme of the first section of this Psalm. This is why we celebrate Advent every year. It’s a time to remember the coming of Christ, which is the basis for our song of joy. Our joy comes from recalling and bringing back to our memories what it was like when God saved us; and the amazing grace that should cause joy to overflow within us. We read in Psalm 103: “Praise the Lord O my soul, and forget not all His benefits – who forgives all your sins and who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.”
So second, we are reminded that the redemptive light of God’s deliverance brings us this song of joy. For Israel, deliverance from a foreign land – in this case Babylon; and in the case of Moses, Egypt – serves as a picture of salvation. This redemptive light of God’s grace is what led them home, yet also pointed them to the coming of the Messiah. This song of joy reflected God’s promise of redemptive joy to come in Christ. In Isaiah 51, the prophet Isaiah reflects upon God’s redemptive activity of the past, as he prophetically points to God’s future redemptive activity in Christ saying: “The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”
What a beautiful picture of this song of joy that we have been given in Christ. In the New Testament Peter refers to this joy of being ransomed and redeemed by Christ as “joy inexpressible and glorious” because we are receiving the goal of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls. And so like the Psalmist, our song of joy comes from remembering our salvation and looking forward to the goal of our faith, which is Christ. And so it’s from this redemptive perspective that we are able to see that this light of joy is what produces a song of joy in our hearts. And then third, this testimony to our song of joy bears witness to those around us. The end of verse 2 and then verse 3 proclaim this great truth about the joy of God’s redemptive work: “Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.” One significant thing about true Christian joy is that it’s contagious. People see it in our attitudes and actions, as did the nations surrounding Israel.
The nations saw what God did for Israel, and it wasn’t what they deserved, and so they marveled at God’s grace, and at the way God’s people responded to it in joy. How we respond to the work of God in our lives testifies to unbelievers around us regarding our faith, thus we want to sing our song of joy in all situations, not just when life is good, but when we face difficult trials and circumstances as well. This then leads to a second main point, which we see in verse 4: we pray for God to restore our joy. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the streams in the Negev.” The first section of the Psalm calls us to remember how God has given us joy in the past, but what about now in the present? Living in the joy of the Lord requires more than just a nostalgic look back at how great it was when God saved us; we need the light of this great truth to restore our song of joy in the present. Negev is a dry desert land that needs water to bring things back to life. The imagery that the Psalmist paints is one of a pilgrim or a person who needs to trust God to refresh and revive their joy in the present.
It’s a prayer that will shake us out of complacency, as well as our fears and anxieties, when we are not living in the joy of our salvation. We have a song of joy but sometimes we are not singing it. We need to reclaim our song of joy through prayer, thus first confess our need for joy in the badlands of life. Badlands are those times in our lives when we feel like we are in the wilderness or in a spiritual desert due to trials or tribulations, and we need God to renew our joy. This is what the prayer of the Psalmist is about, and like the Psalmist, we offer it to God on the basis of what God has already given to us: our song of joy. It’s a new song, in the sense we need it refreshed in our current circumstances, but it’s based upon an old truth of God’s redemption; and so we pray for God to restore this joy to us in our present situation.
This is reminiscent of what Isaiah says about the joy of the redeemed at the coming of Christ in Isaiah 35: “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. It will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. Say to those with fearful hearts: ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, He will come with vengeance and retribution and save you.’ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” We see the imagery of renewal and refreshment for God’s people when the light of God’s redemption shines upon them. This promise of our song of joy being restored is ours in Christ, because we know this second point: the streams of joy are provided by the living water of God’s grace.
This is what the Psalmist is praying for in verse 4; and it will be answered on the basis of God’s grace, thus like the Psalmist we look to God to restore our joy; and as Christians the streams of joy are provided to us in Christ, who described our joy, in John chapter 7, as streams of living water that well up inside us because of the Holy Spirit. The trials and tribulations of the Christian life, which at times seem like the desert of Negev, are designed to develop us and to enhance our joy. And so we read in verses 5 & 6: “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.” Thus we see a third point: the maturity of joy is what brings spiritual growth in our lives. The light of God’s grace and goodness is at work within us.
This imagery of a farmer going forth to sow and eventually returning with a harvest is teaching us the principle of hardship and sorrow leading to great joy and spiritual growth.
Both the Old and New Testaments teach us this truth about God using trials to mature us and to grow our joy in Him. It’s been said that you can trust God with your tears, for as Spurgeon said: “God is too good to be unkind and He is to wise to be mistaken. And when you cannot trace His hand, you must trust His heart.” So when we walk through times of trials and sorrows we remember what God has done for us in the past and trust that He will do it again. This imagery gives us a third and final point to see from the Psalm: we persevere in God’s promise of joy. As we pray for God to restore our joy and seek to grow in His joy, we must continue to commit ourselves to God’s promise of joy for our future as His people.
God does not give up on us, even when we so often forget the benefits of His grace; and He hears our prayers even when we get stuck in the desert storms of life. God calls us to persevere in the hope that Psalms like this one bring to us in times of trouble. They shed the light of God’s steadfast promises to deliver us from our troubles, and teach us to persevere and continue to trust in God’s promises so as to sing our song of joy. In these last two verses we learn first the patience necessary in order to harvest joy. The imagery of sowing or planting teaches us the importance of waiting; and in this case patiently waiting upon God to act in times of tears and sorrow. We don’t give up, but we persevere in God’s promises to us. There is a time for sorrow and a time for joy; and our patience is a result of God’s promises to us.
The joy of Advent is God’s answer to the perseverance of His Old Testament saints; and for us too as Christians, the coming of Christ to be the light of the world continues to be our basis for receiving the joy of the Lord as well. The second point to see is the work required in order to harvest joy.
The sower must be patient and trust that the harvest will come, but it’s the responsibility of the sower, even through tears and tough times to put in the work. And so you see, the Christian life is much the same. God calls us as His people to the work of His kingdom; and to continue to do good and to serve, even in the sorrow of suffering; and even when we might not see or experience the fruit of our labor. As Paul tells us in Galatians: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, so as to sow in order to please the Spirit, not the flesh; for at the appropriate time we will reap a harvest if we don’t give up.”
Like the Psalmist we know that the harvest of joy is coming, thus we continue to wait patiently but also work diligently in serving God and doing the things He has called us to do. For we see third, the return received from harvesting joy. God promises a return or a spiritual profit when we persevere in the promises of joy. The Psalmist will reap the sheaves or the blessings of joy by his perseverance in the promises of God. The great harvest to come was in the first Advent of Christ, in which Jesus gives His people a new song of joy that comes through faith in Him and in His finished work of salvation for us. This new song of joy is based on the same light of God’s redemption and deliverance from sin that moved the Psalmist to sing it; and that continues to move us to sing for joy as we await Christ’s final Advent.
The light of God’s presence with us today through Christ our Savior reminds us of our joy and the experiences of joy we can have and will have in this present life as Christians. But one day we will keep on singing our song of joy with no interruptions, not only with a joy inexpressible and glorious, but with a joy unending, because we will see the light of God’s presence face to face in Christ our Savior.
©You’re welcome to recycle these resources for your church free of charge. However, if you find them useful, please consider making a donation to the ministry of GCC.
Pastor Dennis Bone
12-17-17
Our theme this Advent season is God’s light, specifically revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” and in Him, the apostle John declares, was life and that life was the light of man. The Psalms reveal and proclaim God’s light through His gracious presence with His people, as they looked forward to Christ’s coming into the world at Advent. Thus as we study the Psalms this Advent season, we are focusing on how God’s light reflects the hope, peace, joy, love, and ultimately the victory we have in Christ, who comes to fulfill the promises of the Psalms; and as the Light of the world He shines the light of salvation into our hearts.
This morning, on the third Sunday of Advent, our focus is on the light of joy. Our text today is Psalm 126; and like last week’s Psalm, Psalm 85, the word light is not found in the passage but the joy that God’s light reflects and provides for His people is. The light of God’s presence with us, specifically revealed in the coming of Christ, provides us with the light of joy. Psalm 126 celebrates this light of joy in a song of joy that God gives to His people. So please follow along as I read Psalm 126: When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the streams in the Negev. 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.
You may have noticed in your Bible that this Psalm is labeled a “song of ascents.” It’s one of the 15 Psalms designated this way, starting with Psalm 120 and going through Psalm 134. This series of Psalms refer to songs of worship used by pilgrims making their ascent or journey up to the temple in Jerusalem, reflecting and expressing their love for God and their experiences of His grace, goodness and faithfulness in their lives. Psalm 126 begins with an expression of dream-like gratitude for God delivering His people from captivity and bringing them a joy that is almost unbelievable or inexpressible; and it continues by praying that this joy be renewed and continued in their lives.
We all want joy, don’t we? The joy that the Psalmist sings about is not designed to be temporary; it’s not to be confused with happiness or someone’s temperament or personality. No, this is the joy of the Lord that is grounded in God’s presence with us, and our experience of His grace in our lives. It’s a song about being freed from the captivity of sin and the consequences of sin that leads to sorrow and frustration and unhappiness in one’s life. This is a place where God’s people often found themselves in the Old Testament. You might be there, or have been there too, because of choices or circumstances that blind you to this joy of the Lord, or hide it from you sight. The darkness of sin gets in the way of our joy. This Psalm is about you seeing the light of God’s joy once again; and staying in this light as you live the Christian life.
So the first main point to consider is this: We praise God for our song of joy. This is what we see in the first three verses of the Psalm. Our song of joy is a song that God gives to us. It’s not a song that you make up on your own or get from your own efforts, but it’s one that God gives us to sing. The Psalmist calls us to remember how God has given you joy in the past.
He says, “When the Lord brought back the captives from Zion” – when God rescued us and saved us from our enemies, due to our sin – “we were like those who dreamed. And our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with songs of joy.” God’s people are reflecting upon and re-living the joy of their redemption. When life gets hard or difficult we must remember the work of God’s gracious salvation in our lives and we rejoice in Him. Has anything ever happened in your life when you said to yourself: “I don’t believe this; it’s like a dream.” It doesn’t seem real because you didn’t expect it. This is the wonder of our salvation, and it’s when we remember the unexpected and undeserving nature of God’s grace in freeing us from the captivity of our sin that we too will sing with joy.
We have short memories, and as a result the whirlwind of life can blow away our joy or get us stuck in the mud of self-centeredness, despair and self-pity. This Psalm is a call to remember that God has given us a song of joy and to praise God for it. These first three verses teach us three things about this song of joy. First, the struggle to remember and to maintain our song of joy. We are a forgetful people; thus we need God to shine the light of His word into our minds. We need to be reminded of the great things God has done for us. This is the main theme of the first section of this Psalm. This is why we celebrate Advent every year. It’s a time to remember the coming of Christ, which is the basis for our song of joy. Our joy comes from recalling and bringing back to our memories what it was like when God saved us; and the amazing grace that should cause joy to overflow within us. We read in Psalm 103: “Praise the Lord O my soul, and forget not all His benefits – who forgives all your sins and who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.”
So second, we are reminded that the redemptive light of God’s deliverance brings us this song of joy. For Israel, deliverance from a foreign land – in this case Babylon; and in the case of Moses, Egypt – serves as a picture of salvation. This redemptive light of God’s grace is what led them home, yet also pointed them to the coming of the Messiah. This song of joy reflected God’s promise of redemptive joy to come in Christ. In Isaiah 51, the prophet Isaiah reflects upon God’s redemptive activity of the past, as he prophetically points to God’s future redemptive activity in Christ saying: “The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”
What a beautiful picture of this song of joy that we have been given in Christ. In the New Testament Peter refers to this joy of being ransomed and redeemed by Christ as “joy inexpressible and glorious” because we are receiving the goal of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls. And so like the Psalmist, our song of joy comes from remembering our salvation and looking forward to the goal of our faith, which is Christ. And so it’s from this redemptive perspective that we are able to see that this light of joy is what produces a song of joy in our hearts. And then third, this testimony to our song of joy bears witness to those around us. The end of verse 2 and then verse 3 proclaim this great truth about the joy of God’s redemptive work: “Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.” One significant thing about true Christian joy is that it’s contagious. People see it in our attitudes and actions, as did the nations surrounding Israel.
The nations saw what God did for Israel, and it wasn’t what they deserved, and so they marveled at God’s grace, and at the way God’s people responded to it in joy. How we respond to the work of God in our lives testifies to unbelievers around us regarding our faith, thus we want to sing our song of joy in all situations, not just when life is good, but when we face difficult trials and circumstances as well. This then leads to a second main point, which we see in verse 4: we pray for God to restore our joy. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the streams in the Negev.” The first section of the Psalm calls us to remember how God has given us joy in the past, but what about now in the present? Living in the joy of the Lord requires more than just a nostalgic look back at how great it was when God saved us; we need the light of this great truth to restore our song of joy in the present. Negev is a dry desert land that needs water to bring things back to life. The imagery that the Psalmist paints is one of a pilgrim or a person who needs to trust God to refresh and revive their joy in the present.
It’s a prayer that will shake us out of complacency, as well as our fears and anxieties, when we are not living in the joy of our salvation. We have a song of joy but sometimes we are not singing it. We need to reclaim our song of joy through prayer, thus first confess our need for joy in the badlands of life. Badlands are those times in our lives when we feel like we are in the wilderness or in a spiritual desert due to trials or tribulations, and we need God to renew our joy. This is what the prayer of the Psalmist is about, and like the Psalmist, we offer it to God on the basis of what God has already given to us: our song of joy. It’s a new song, in the sense we need it refreshed in our current circumstances, but it’s based upon an old truth of God’s redemption; and so we pray for God to restore this joy to us in our present situation.
This is reminiscent of what Isaiah says about the joy of the redeemed at the coming of Christ in Isaiah 35: “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. It will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. Say to those with fearful hearts: ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, He will come with vengeance and retribution and save you.’ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” We see the imagery of renewal and refreshment for God’s people when the light of God’s redemption shines upon them. This promise of our song of joy being restored is ours in Christ, because we know this second point: the streams of joy are provided by the living water of God’s grace.
This is what the Psalmist is praying for in verse 4; and it will be answered on the basis of God’s grace, thus like the Psalmist we look to God to restore our joy; and as Christians the streams of joy are provided to us in Christ, who described our joy, in John chapter 7, as streams of living water that well up inside us because of the Holy Spirit. The trials and tribulations of the Christian life, which at times seem like the desert of Negev, are designed to develop us and to enhance our joy. And so we read in verses 5 & 6: “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.” Thus we see a third point: the maturity of joy is what brings spiritual growth in our lives. The light of God’s grace and goodness is at work within us.
This imagery of a farmer going forth to sow and eventually returning with a harvest is teaching us the principle of hardship and sorrow leading to great joy and spiritual growth.
Both the Old and New Testaments teach us this truth about God using trials to mature us and to grow our joy in Him. It’s been said that you can trust God with your tears, for as Spurgeon said: “God is too good to be unkind and He is to wise to be mistaken. And when you cannot trace His hand, you must trust His heart.” So when we walk through times of trials and sorrows we remember what God has done for us in the past and trust that He will do it again. This imagery gives us a third and final point to see from the Psalm: we persevere in God’s promise of joy. As we pray for God to restore our joy and seek to grow in His joy, we must continue to commit ourselves to God’s promise of joy for our future as His people.
God does not give up on us, even when we so often forget the benefits of His grace; and He hears our prayers even when we get stuck in the desert storms of life. God calls us to persevere in the hope that Psalms like this one bring to us in times of trouble. They shed the light of God’s steadfast promises to deliver us from our troubles, and teach us to persevere and continue to trust in God’s promises so as to sing our song of joy. In these last two verses we learn first the patience necessary in order to harvest joy. The imagery of sowing or planting teaches us the importance of waiting; and in this case patiently waiting upon God to act in times of tears and sorrow. We don’t give up, but we persevere in God’s promises to us. There is a time for sorrow and a time for joy; and our patience is a result of God’s promises to us.
The joy of Advent is God’s answer to the perseverance of His Old Testament saints; and for us too as Christians, the coming of Christ to be the light of the world continues to be our basis for receiving the joy of the Lord as well. The second point to see is the work required in order to harvest joy.
The sower must be patient and trust that the harvest will come, but it’s the responsibility of the sower, even through tears and tough times to put in the work. And so you see, the Christian life is much the same. God calls us as His people to the work of His kingdom; and to continue to do good and to serve, even in the sorrow of suffering; and even when we might not see or experience the fruit of our labor. As Paul tells us in Galatians: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, so as to sow in order to please the Spirit, not the flesh; for at the appropriate time we will reap a harvest if we don’t give up.”
Like the Psalmist we know that the harvest of joy is coming, thus we continue to wait patiently but also work diligently in serving God and doing the things He has called us to do. For we see third, the return received from harvesting joy. God promises a return or a spiritual profit when we persevere in the promises of joy. The Psalmist will reap the sheaves or the blessings of joy by his perseverance in the promises of God. The great harvest to come was in the first Advent of Christ, in which Jesus gives His people a new song of joy that comes through faith in Him and in His finished work of salvation for us. This new song of joy is based on the same light of God’s redemption and deliverance from sin that moved the Psalmist to sing it; and that continues to move us to sing for joy as we await Christ’s final Advent.
The light of God’s presence with us today through Christ our Savior reminds us of our joy and the experiences of joy we can have and will have in this present life as Christians. But one day we will keep on singing our song of joy with no interruptions, not only with a joy inexpressible and glorious, but with a joy unending, because we will see the light of God’s presence face to face in Christ our Savior.
©You’re welcome to recycle these resources for your church free of charge. However, if you find them useful, please consider making a donation to the ministry of GCC.
