Psalm 126: God's Restoration Plan

"Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!" Psalm 126:4

In Psalm 126 we see Psalm that commemorates the Israelite's return from the exile. As we have been looking at in the book of Daniel, for a long period of time the Israelites were taken captive from their own land to live in Babylon. However, the Lord eventually provided them with a way out and restored them to their homeland. This Psalm praises God for that event, and then asks that he continue his restoration plan for the people of Israel.

The psalm starts out by proclaiming how "when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream" (1). In the Psalms, when we see the word "Zion," most of the time is it a poetic reference to the city of Jerusalem. Thus, the psalmist is pointing out here how the Lord has restored the capital city of Jerusalem back to Israel, and this was so amazing that it didn't even seem like reality; it seemed like a "dream." Because of this, the peoples' hearts were "filled with laughter" and their tounges with "shouts of joy," thus proclaiming amoung the nations of the Lord's great deeds (2). However, the psalm does not stop there, as the psalmist continues to petition to the Lord to continue restoring them: "Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb." The psalmsit here asks that the Lord to restore Israel again, just like he did initially when he delivered them from the exile. Like a mighty stream, the psalmists ask that the Lord cause Israel to flourish. In the conclusion of the psalm, the psalmist ends on a happy note, recalling the promises of God. He remarks that "those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy." In other words, if children of God go through pain, it is not for loss. They will truly--either on this side of eternity of the other--"reap with shouts of joy" because they have endured and stayed faithful to their Lord.

Thus, we find our application for this morning, that God is a restorative God, and since we know that this is true from history past, we know that it will be true today since God does not change (Heb. 13:11). And if God is a restorative God, that means that he will restore our conditions. Perhaps you feel like one who is "sowing in tears" this morning. Perhaps you are dealing with an intense work situation, a dramatic household, or a gloomy medical condition. Or, perhaps you are just tired or sick! Whatever your "tears of sorrow" are today, let us realize from this psalm that not only will the Lord deliver us all from those trials, but he will grant to us "shouts of joy." The trials in this world are not our end; they are our beginning. Often people view trials as the end of their lives, but for Christians, even the worst trial of death is a doorway into eternal life, where our "shouts of joy" will be forevermore. Amen!