Well, please open your Bibles this evening to Psalm 126, 126, you'll find it near the middle of your Bible, page 657 in the Pew Bible, as we take up our series through the Songs of Ascents, which we have found and will continue to find help us as we go through this life as pilgrims, pilgrims on our way to our heavenly city, our heavenly worship of God. So I'm 126. Now we all like what is commonly called a sure thing. A certain success. A hot stock tip. A game against a losing team. We just know it's going to go our way. A secret for losing weight and right now. A job offer after an internship. Well, when we believe we actually have a sure thing, we get really excited. Very happy about what's about to happen. We may go all in to go after it. We may think it's so sure we just sit back and wait for it to come. But we all like a sure thing, don't we? What's the last sure thing that you were counting on? Remember the thrill of anticipation? Remember the agony? of disappointment when the chickens that you were counting didn't hatch. Why do we look for the next sure thing? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Because once in a while, like a slot machine that pays out, we get what we expect. We get it. That sure thing comes to us. But even then, what turns out, it may even turn out to be a good thing. It really was never a sure thing. There's nothing in this world that's a sure thing other than death. But even that, price can come first, and that's not a sure thing. Taxes, not quite always a sure thing. We do our best to avoid them. There's no sure thing in this world. But even what we get, what we thought was a sure thing, the happiness that it brings, that doesn't last either. In this fallen world, the fine print is true, that past performance does not guarantee future returns. Now, I know that's in the fine print when you give your money to the stockbroker, But we don't like to think about that. But it's true. But in Psalm 126, the psalmist stands on the fact that in the Lord's redemptive economy, past performance does guarantee future return. And he gives us good reasons for rejoicing in a sure thing. Remembering a past event and looking forward to a future event. These are our two points tonight. remembering a past miraculous restoration and praying for a future guaranteed restoration. Psalm 126, those two points come in two halves, first and second half of the psalm. Listen as we read the word of God together, Psalm 126. A song of ascents. 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. And here ends the reading of God's Word. Psalm 126. The psalmist opens in the first three verses by remembering a past event, a past miraculous event of restoration of God's people. In verse 1, he calls to mind this past event when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion. And of course, we want to ask, when was that? And this is a poem. It's not that specific. We don't know for sure when it was, but many want to understand it as looking back to the events of when God brought the people back from Babylon and reestablished them in Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple and reestablished them in the land. Now, we can't be sure that's it, but that certainly fits and it's helpful to our understanding, so we're going to run with that theme for this sermon, but that's what the psalmist has in mind. Because if we have that in mind, we understand what's going on here. In Deuteronomy chapter 30, after Israel renewed covenant with the Lord, but before they entered into the promised land, Moses issued them a warning and a promise. He warned them that when you abandon this covenant, this covenant that you've just renewed and you've said, we will do it, the Lord will drive you out of this land. And he promised them that when you repent, when the Lord circumcises your hearts, the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and gather you again from where he has scattered you. Israel's exile was a sure thing because of their sin. And their restoration was a sure thing because of God's promise. And the psalmist has us bring that to mind as he continues in verse 1. calling to mind the people's reaction when the Lord accomplished this sure thing that he had promised to do. We were like those who dream. We were like those who dream. What the Lord did seemed too good to be true. It was too fantastic to be real. We might say, I was pinching myself. Am I really awake? We were like those who dreamed. It was beyond comprehension. And as a community, they were ecstatic. They could not contain their joy. And then our mouth was filled with laughter, they say, and our tongue with shouts of joy. They were overwhelmed by this restoration that the God did by His mighty hand and His outstretched arm, and they were just overwhelmed with joy. The Lord fulfilled His promise, as Ezekiel described it, to gather them again from the nations, just as He brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. It was that powerful, it was that prominent, that the nations, we read, understood what had happened. Their neighbors took notice and no one could deny that God had intervened on their behalf, that the Lord had restored their fortunes and He had not done it in secret. He didn't do it in a corner. He did it for the whole world to see. And the psalmist remembers, then at that time, they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. The Lord glorified His name in all the earth. And now in verse 3, having remembered when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion and how God's people overflowed with joy when He did so. And how the nations took note. The psalmist and fellow pilgrims rejoice again. Their joy is renewed as they remember the saving power of their Lord. And they remember that what the nations had said in the past was true. And so we read. The Lord has done great things for us. We are glad. We're glad now. To remember the work of the Lord in the past brings joy for the people of God today. But why did the psalmist start this way? Why did he bring this remembrance to God's people that they might be renewed in their joy? Because after their miraculous return, they still faced the hardships of life. And the enemies of all God's people, the world, the flesh, and the devil, the Lord did not restore them to paradise. The Lord restored them to a life in a fallen world, cursed as with thorns and thistles because of sin. Yes, the Lord had brought them back. Yes, the Lord had restored their fortune. But yet they still remain in the world. The urgencies of life, difficult circumstances, difficult people, hard choices, real pressures, The fog of spiritual warfare had blinded God's people to this powerful and irreversible act of God on their behalf. But by recalling the joy of this past, miraculous restoration, Israel was revived in the joy of the Lord, which is our strength. So that's the purpose, and that's what we should hear from this. Israel indeed needed this reminder that the Lord of hosts almighty was powerful to save. That He can do what He wishes and He will do what He promises. Do you need this reminder? Have you forgotten the great things the Lord has done for us? Every deliverance, every restoration in the Old Testament is a picture of a sure thing that for them was yet to come. a great deliverance, a great restoration by which God would accomplish the gathering of his people in Christ Jesus. What they looked forward to, we look back upon, Christ has since come. Christ has come and accomplished this great restoration. Once and for all when he offered himself up on the cross. Once and for all when he delivered himself up for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. And this great work that Christ has accomplished, He applies to all of His people through the Holy Spirit with the gift of faith. And He does this even when we're dead in our trespasses and sins. Even when we were His enemies, Christ died for us. As Ephesians tells us, we've been saved by grace. The unmerited good favor of God through faith, which is His gift. It's not our own doing, it's the gift of God so that no one can boast. It's not the result of works. The work Christ accomplished, he gives to his people. And he gives it to them by faith. And by faith, we know that we have been justified. We've been made right with God forever and we rejoice in the glory of God. And by faith, we've been sanctified. We've been set apart as holy and we will be made completely holy at the day of Christ Jesus through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The Lord has done great things for us. Do we remember? Do you remember how you first responded? How you first rejoiced in your redemption? In your salvation? In your miraculous restoration from death to life, from darkness to light? Do you remember how you rejoiced? Whether the redemption that Christ accomplished once for all was applied to you all of a sudden with a sudden conversion or gradually as your awareness grew, as you look back in your life that He'd been with you all the way, whatever way it came, you have known the joy. The joy of salvation. Faith is the gift of God and we cannot lose it. And because we cannot lose faith, we cannot lose our salvation. But we can lose the joy. of our salvation. We can lose the joy of our salvation because we sin, which separates us from God. Like David, when he sinned with Bathsheba, so that he prayed in Psalm 51, Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation. And we can lose the joy of salvation when we are distracted, when we are preoccupied with the things of this world, of this earth, distracted from setting our minds on the things which are above where Christ is seated. That's why the New Testament's full of injunctions to set our minds there, to look forward to the goal, to look to where Jesus has gone before. Because if all we see is here and now, we won't lose faith and we won't lose salvation, but we will lose the joy of our salvation. But joy lost can be regained. When we remember not what more we need to do, not how much more we need to grasp, but when we remember what Jesus Christ has already come to do for us, what He is doing for us right now at the right hand of God in heaven, we will confess again with the psalmist the Lord has done great things for us. We are glad. Do you miss that gladness? If you miss that gladness, there's no reason to moan or despair or give up. There is every reason to look back to the person and work of Jesus Christ, what He's done for all His people, and to the fact that you have known yourself a sinner saved by His grace. And your joy will warm again. Laughter will fill your mouth. and your neighbors will take notice. Just like the nations took notice of Israel, your neighbors will take notice. Why is that? Because Jesus himself said that in him, through faith, you're the light of the world. Sometimes I don't feel very bright, but we're the light of the world. We live in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom we shine as lights, believe it or not. You may let dim to yourself, but compared to the darkness that's around us, you shine in Christ. And your neighbors will notice. And when they notice, Lord willing, you are ready to give them the reason for the hope that you have. Remembering the work of Christ for all His people and His work for you in particular. Well, the psalmist begins by encouraging the people of God to rejoice in what God has already done. And he continues in verses 4 through 6 to lead the congregation in praying for a future event. A future guaranteed restoration when their joy will be made complete. Remember what we read in the Heidelberg that we have the beginnings of eternal joy now. The fullness of that joy is yet to come. And the psalmist wants to teach us to pray for that. The heart of the prayer is short. First part of verse 4. Restore our fortunes, O Lord. Restore our fortunes, O Lord. This is not a wish. The Lord might do something really good sometime down the road. It has the force of command. It's a strong prayer. It's a prayer for the Lord to act and to act quickly. And it's a confident prayer. Confident not because of any selfish pride or ambition. but because of a confident hope that's anchored in Christ. Anchored to the promise the Lord gave Abram when He showed Abram the land. Again, now we're talking about Israel here in this psalm. They're thinking of the land. They're remembering Abram and the promise God gave to him that all the land that you see, I will give you and your offspring forever. Lord, restore our fortunes. Restore us in the land. Fulfill your promise to us. The psalmists in all Israel had inherited an earthly land. But they had not yet inherited the heavenly land that it signifies, that it pointed to. Hebrews chapter 11 shows us and tells us in great detail how the Old Testament saints all died in faith. Not having received the things promised. The promised land, the geography, was not it. It was a picture. It was a prelude. And the saints of old who trusted in the Messiah to come understood that that was not the end. They knew that they were strangers and exiles on the earth and they were waiting for the day when the fullness of this inheritance would be established. And so by faith the saints, even then and now, pray that restore our fortunes, O Lord. Finish what you've begun. Bring in all your people to dwell with you forever. Not only into the earthly land ruled from an earthly Jerusalem, but into the heavenly land that's ruled from the new Jerusalem in heaven. Bring in not only the twelve tribes of Israel from the north, south, east, and west, but bring in people from every tribe, language, people, and nation. Abram was promised that he would be a blessing to the nation. We pray for that to come in. What the Old Testament saints understood in part, the Apostle Paul explains more fully in Galatians chapter 3, the Lord's promise was not made to many offsprings, to many individuals. It was made to one offspring, Jesus Christ. And if you're in Christ through faith, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. You will inherit this heavenly land. Therefore, Israel's prayer is the church's prayer. It's our prayer. Restore our fortunes, O Lord. And even though this future restoration will be beyond all that we can imagine, as we confessed in the Heidelberg again tonight, the psalmist portrays it with poetic pictures in verses 4-6 to give us a sense of the contrast between here and now and then and there. It's dramatic. It's an accommodation to help us get a sense. In verse 4, the psalmist compares our present circumstances to life in the desert and our future restoration to the coming of much-needed rain. We get that one. Don't we get that one? The Negev is no different than crossing the hills here just a couple miles and you're in the same thing. We know that the gullies run dry almost all the time, and it's not until the winter rains come that the rain comes down and the gullies fill her up and you see streams in the desert. That's the picture. It's a parched and weary land here now, Lord. Bring us refreshment. Bring us restoration. Bring us blessing that has us overflow. In verses 5 and 6, the psalmist compares our present circumstances to the toilsome life of farmers, eking out a living from the land and the future restoration to the arrival of the harvest. And some of us can relate to that as well. Until the harvest is ready, there will be toil. There will be tears. Those who sow in tears are God's people. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, is a child of God who labors, who labors in this life. Not in vain, but in hope, trusting the Lord for the harvest to come. we plant we may even water but the Lord alone will give the increase but when that harvest comes in and it will come in God's people will rejoice and enter into rest from our toil restore our fortunes O Lord so that those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy So that he who goes out with weeping, bearing seeds for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. You see the contrast. Restore our fortunes, O Lord. Refresh us. Give us cause to rejoice in the fullness of eternal joy. So the psalmist in Israel prayed for the Lord to come in glory. That's what they were praying. Come and make this all right. Put it all right. Finish what you've promised. But how did he come? He came in humility. He came as a man. He came in the flesh. And he came to his own. And they did not receive him. John tells us, but all who did receive him, who believed in his name, who were given faith to believe in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children of God. Who have been miraculously restored in the past through faith in Christ. Who have been restored to favor with God. Who have been restored to communion with God. We join with the saints of all ages, even the psalmist. And until Christ comes again in glory with those who are yet to come. We join in praying for Christ to come again in glory. We pray for a future restoration that is a sure thing because it's been guaranteed by His resurrection from the dead in the past. Rejoice in a sure thing. This is it. It's the only one you get. Past performance guarantees future returns in the redemptive economy of our Lord. Paul declared it in 1 Corinthians 15 because Christ has been raised from the dead. All God's people shall be made alive in Christ. Shall. But each in its own order, Christ the firstfruits at His resurrection and then at His coming, the harvest, those who belong to Christ. Until that day, Jesus promised us tribulation in the world. There will be toil, there will be tears, there will be troubles. But he also urges us to take heart because he has already overcome the world. It's a done deal. It's a sure thing. And he will fully establish it when he comes again in glory. And so we continue our pilgrimage. All these songs are about our pilgrimage. we find ourselves still in the pilgrimage. We are still strangers in this dry and weary land, plagued by toil and tears. But we continue rejoicing, rejoicing in a sure thing that is ours in Christ already, a heavenly inheritance that is yet to come. Where the river of the water of life flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the heavenly Jerusalem, and where the harvest of God's people will be brought in, pure and undefiled, free from weeds, separated from the chaff. We continue our pilgrimage trusting that he who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. Trusting that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. We continue our pilgrimage eager to see Jesus face to face. To hear him say, enter, enter into the joy of your master and to have him wipe away every tear every tear from our eyes and to know that death shall be no more and neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore. Jesus' parting words in the revelation given to John is this promise surely I'm coming soon and so we pray amen come come Lord Jesus restore our fortunes oh Lord let's pray Heavenly Father we thank you from this psalm this Old Testament picture we thank you for reminding us of what you have done for us, your people. All that you pictured in the Old Testament has been accomplished in Christ. And we thank you, Lord, that in Him we have been brought from death to life. We have been restored in our fellowship with you. We have been justified. We have been sanctified. We are being sanctified and have been glorified in Him. And we wait for the day when the fullness of this comes in and we rejoice. We rejoice in what awaits us there. Jerusalem the golden with milk and honey blessed. We pray, Father, that by your Spirit when we lose sight of all that you've done, all that you will do, that you would have us repent of any sin that separates us from this joy, that you'd strengthen us to lift our eyes to the heavens where Christ is seated that we might be reminded of this sure thing already accomplished and not yet fully realized that we might continue our pilgrimage rejoicing in the sure thing done for us by Jesus Christ, our Lord. In his name we pray. Amen.