Expect God to restore your joy and his glory through your tears

What do you think your future will be like? Do you still sit back and imagine it? I know as children we’re all very hopeful because our future has all kinds of possibilities. So we day dream about what might come one day. But as we get older, our future seems to be a bit more set and predictable. We stop imagining it. Many people even become pessimistic about it. We carry around an Eeyore like vibe - “Don’t get your hopes up and you’ll never be disappointed”. We might think I’m experiencing tears now and I’ll probably just experience more tears in the future.

Or on the absolute opposite side is the optimist about the future. Things are going pretty well right now, I suspect they’ll always be like this. I’ll never encounter a problem and nothing will ever be difficult. But the Bible gives us a different picture.

It’s not tears now and tears in the future. It’s also not only joy now and joy in the future. It’s tears now and joy in the future.

Main Point – Expect God to restore your joy and his glory through your tears

Prayer

Our psalm aims at the pessimist to start. He wants to convince them of what their future will be.

Point #1 – God will restore your joy (vs. 1-2a)

You can see our author beginning his psalm by remembering. There was some event in the past that had brought them incredible joy.

READ VS 1-2B

It’s unclear exactly what this event was. But it’s possible that it was the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. If you remember the history of Israel, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed and they were captured by Babylon. They were in exile in Babylon for about 70 years, but then they were allowed to return to Jerusalem. Here we read that when the fortunes of Zion (the mountain on which Jerusalem is built) were restored, they were living in a dream. It makes sense that this could be the return from exile. It seemed absolutely too good to be true.

Trace with me what they had experienced. There were slaves in Egypt for 400 years, but God miraculously and unexpectedly delivered them. They had their own land, their own nation. They had their own kings and God had blessed them with incredible wealth. But then just like Adam and Eve had everything in the garden of Eden and then lost it through their own sinfulness, the Jews sinned and they lost the land. They blew it. They had it and they lost it. They were taken into exile into Babylon. Goodbye land. Goodbye joy. Goodbye any chance they had of living with God’s favor.

But then something they never would have anticipated happened. They are allowed to return. It’s like getting the message that you get a second chance! When they thought their court case was settled and they would have to endure their life sentence, the Judge reopened the case and allowed them to be free. This was their dream come true. They were laughing. They were shouting for joy. They were able to return to their land.

This probably came as an incredible surprise to them. But it shouldn’t have. Because God had predicted this exact thing and had promised it over and over again. As far back as Deuteronomy, this is what God said:

[When you are] among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and [you] return to the Lord your God… and obey his voice…  then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. -Deut. 30:3

It’s almost as if God knew that this was going to happen a thousand years ahead of time. Sure enough, when the people were sent into exile, Jeremiah had this message for them:.

For behold… I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah… and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers.” - Jeremiah 30:3

And this restoring their fortunes is a theme in Jeremiah.

I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first… I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the LORD. - Jer. 33:7, 11

It’s a theme in Ezekiel too.

I will restore your own fortunes in their midst - Eze. 16:53

I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel - Eze 39:25

Should I keep going? I will. It’s a theme in the minor prophets.

When I restore the fortunes of my people - Hos. 6:11

when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem - Joel 3:1

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel - Amos 9:14

For the LORD their God will be mindful of [Judah]

and restore their fortunes. - Zeph. 2:7

It shows up over and over in the psalms:

the LORD restores the fortunes of his people - Ps. 14:7

God restores the fortunes of his people - Ps. 53:6

you restored the fortunes of Jacob. - Ps. 85:1

This is everywhere! It’s everywhere because restoring people who are broken is who God is! It’s what he does! The entire Bible is a story about how God restores people who are broken. When God restored his people and he brought them back, they were like those who dream. Their mouths were filled with laughter. They were giving shouts of joy. But in the midst of it, they could have said, “This is exactly what God always does and in fact what he promises to do.”

Do you long to have this kind of joy? Are there times when you feel like you’re someone who blew your chance? You should have made better choices and now you’re just stuck living with the consequences forever. Do you feel like you're someone living in exile?

The Lord has news for you. He restores fortunes. He brings people back. And he doesn’t bring them back begrudgingly. When he restores people, he doesn’t put them on probation. It’s not as if he lets them in the land, but says, “Don’t you dare even think about sinning again or you’re out of here!” He gives generously. We don’t return to God and live a life of fear. We return and live a life of unconstrained joy. For those of us who find ourselves sinning and missing the mark, this is like a dream. It does seem too good to be true.

Sadly, I think that many Christians walk through their life without joy. They think following God is just gritting your teeth and bearing it. God has an enormous list of things he expects of you and they’ll all make you miserable. You’ll have to sit quietly in church and hate it. You’ll have to give away all the money you could use for fun things. You can’t watch any of the good movies or laugh at any of the good jokes. You have to serve other people resentfully all day and never have anyone serve you. This is the image that many non-Christians have of Christianity and it’s unfortunately how many Christians feel as well.

But this is not the way the Bible describes it. For the Christian it describes joy in being with other believers. Joy in growing in your faith. Joy in seeing others come to Christ. Joy in having prayers answered.

Joy in obeying God’s commands. Joy in suffering. Joy in trials. I can tell you personally that I’ve experienced this joy. Even when going through difficult times, there is a deeper joy that can’t be shaken. There are older saints in this room who can testify to the same thing. Are you experiencing this type of joy right now? Or is it something that seems beyond your reach? If you aren’t experiencing it, then perhaps God hasn’t yet restored you. But he wants to. Ask him for it. He loves to restore the fortunes of those who don’t deserve it.

Why? Would God give away so much to people who don’t deserve it? It’s because in addition to your joy…

Point #2 – God will restore his glory (vs. 2b-4)

READ VS 2b-3

The incredible blessing that God accomplished in their lives was recognized by others. Do you see that? The other nations saw how well God had treated his people and it caused them to declare. “The Lord has done great things for them.”

Now I’ve mentioned this before, but “The Lord” isn’t just a respectful title that people sometimes use for God. It is God’s name. In Hebrew his name is Yahweh. Your name is Joe. His name is Bill. Her name is Sarah. God’s name is Yahweh. So here the nations are saying specifically, “Yahweh has done great things”. That is, Yahweh as opposed to the gods that they worshipped. They looked at the God of Israel and they thought. He seems like a pretty great God. He’s done some pretty great things. And what happens as a result of God restoring his people is that his fame spreads to the other nations. And when people recognize how great God is, we call that his glory.

You see we tend to think that God would get the most glory if his church was filled with perfect pristine people. People would think God is awesome if all his people were also awesome. Everyone here is beautiful all of the time. Everyone here is super rich. Everyone here is the kindest person you’ve ever met. They never sin. They never speak unkindly. They’re always generous. They never get angry with their kids. That’s what the people of God ought to be like right? That’s what would give God the most glory right?

But God says, “No! Instead the way that I get glory is when I take broken and ruined people and I restore them. I give them joy and new life. That’s how I get glory.” But we might say, “But God, what if they sin again? You’ve got terrible people here, they could just wander off and ruin your reputation!” God says, “Then I’ll restore them again.” This is why God is so great. He keeps restoring.

You see, if God took someone who was already pretty good and just made them a small bit better, then he would be a God who does small things. If he found someone that already had a good life and had already been making wise decisions and someone who didn’t have any baggage or sinful history and said, “You’re pretty fantastic. You’re the kind of person I want in my kingdom. But I’m gonna teach you how to be a bit better than you already are.” He would be a God who does small things.

But he’s not a God who does small things. He’s a God who does great things. So what does he do? He searches out people who are in the worst places. He finds those who have shipwrecked their lives. He takes entire nations that have sinned their way into exile and slavery and says “You’re the one that I’m choosing to save.”

A runner is more impressive when he can run the farthest distance. A weightlifter is greatest when he can pick up the heaviest burden. A baseball player is the most remarkable when he can hit the ball the deepest into the stands. And our God is the most glorious when the distance between how low sin has brought someone and how high God elevates them is the greatest. God is the most glorious when he removes the greatest sized obstacle out of the way. God is most glorious when he saves the worst people.

I think it’s funny how often we use the word “just” in our prayers. If you listen to people pray we so frequently say things like “Lord, would you just help this person” or “Please just heal so-and-so”. And I’m guilty of it as much as the next person is. But the reason we find ourselves saying “just” all the time is because we’re often asking God to do something that might seem small. We’re not asking him to transform the face of the earth. We’re not asking for world peace. We’re not asking him to resolve global hunger. We just want him to help us pay our bills this month. And I think it betrays the fact that we think God is more likely to do small things for us than he is to do great things.

But that’s not true is it? God wants to receive the most glory. So if anything, he prefers to do great things. I wonder if we’d see God answer more prayers if we started to pray for bigger things. I wonder if he wants to answer incredible requests, but he’s waiting for us to ask for them. Maybe instead of praying, “God would you just help me to struggle with this sin a little less”, we should be praying “God would you please eradicate this sin so that it never creeps its way back into my life again.” Instead of praying, “God, would you just bring my grandson back to church”, we should be praying, “God would you turn his entire life around and make it centered completely on you. Would you cause him to love you so much he can’t stop sharing you with all of his friends.” Instead of praying, “Would you please just save my one coworker” you can pray “God save all of them!”

Because that’s the kind of great things God loves to do and that’s even the kind of great things they pray for in this psalm. Look at verse 4.

READ VS 4

Let me tell you what that part about the Negeb means. We mentioned this a few weeks ago, but Israel has lots of river beds that are completely dry during the summer months. Particularly, they are located in the southern part of Israel in a region called the Negeb. But then once the rainy seasons begin and water starts flowing down the mountains, then flash floods become common. And the dry riverbeds would be filled in an instant. And what was once bare waste is immediately transformed into a life-giving stream that is filled with growth and activity. Grass and flowers appear. Animals come to drink. People rejoice.

The psalmist is praying for this kind of restoration. He’s praying for God to do great things. He doesn’t ask, please just give us a little taste of what we used to have. Please just give us a little trickle of water, enough for us to drink and stay alive. He says restore our fortunes. Give us that dream like laughter. Fill our hearts with that same incredible joy. Rush blessings on us like a raging river. Because you’re a God who deserves great glory and we want you to do great things.

We know that God loves to restore people. And we know he loves to do it in great incredible ways where he gets the most glory, but how exactly will he accomplish this? What will he do to accomplish these things?

Point #3 – God will restore through your tears (vs. 5-6)

Maybe you’ve seen a movie where the whole town agrees they have to come together to build something. You see quick clips of them all grabbing hammers and carrying wood. And they’ve got big smiles on their faces. They’re dropping bricks into place and high fiving one another. Someone slips at one point, but there is a grinning friend that catches them and they both laugh. And amidst all the smiles and the laughter, the incredible thing gets built. All the town stands looking up at it and patting one another on the back.

Unfortunately, no great project in the history of civilization has ever been accomplished like that. The process is always difficult and messy. Things go wrong all the time. You forget to do something and have to take 5 steps backwards before you can move 1 step forward. You sweat. You get tired. You slip and your friend is not there conveniently to catch you. You get injured. The project cost way more than you anticipated and takes far longer than you’d hoped. You get tired of looking at the half-finished task and every morning when you wake up and see it again you say, “I hate that thing”. That’s a more realistic view of what accomplishing something great looks like.

Fortunately, the Bible doesn’t believe in the pretend version of work that’s always smiley. It teaches us the genuine version that is much more messy. Look at our last two verses, 5-6.

READ VS 5-6

God blesses them with the water. They now have a river to irrigate their land. But there’s still lots of work to be done. Sowing seeds is hard work. You have to prepare the land first. You have to get rid of the rocks and the weeds. You have to plow the dirt. You have to find a way to get the water from the river to the field. You have to wake up early. You have to stay out late. You’ll get hurt. You’ll get tired. You’ll get discouraged. That’s why we use the phrase blood, sweat, and tears. Reaping an incredible harvest isn’t simple and easy. It requires work. This is why the people are weeping and sowing in tears.

But perhaps another reason there are tears is something we often don’t think about. It takes an enormous amount of faith to sow seed. Let’s say you’re a farmer living in ancient Israel who had a great season last year. You had a wonderful harvest and ate very well and you were able to store up an abundance of seeds for this year. Keep in mind, you need to have an abundance of seeds if you want to plant again. You can’t simply have an abundance of money because there’s no store you can drive down to just to buy some more seeds. You can’t order it online. The only seeds you’re going to have access to are the ones you stored up. In that sense the seeds you have are worth more than any riches you might have. The seeds actually are the riches.

And what do you have to do with those riches when the sowing season comes around? You have to take them all out of your barn and cast them out into the dirt. You throw out all of your riches and you wait and you hope. You go from being on top of the world in wealth to being completely uncertain of your own survival. Because if a drought occurs, if the water stops flowing, if the plants get diseased, if the locusts come, if things don’t line up exactly in the right way, you lose all of your riches. You have nothing. You starve. When you sow the seed, you are completely at God’s mercy. Sowing is an enormous act of faith because from a worldly standpoint, it’s incredibly risky. You don’t know if you’ll get back what you put in.

So these people are working very hard to the point of tears and they’re exercising a lot of faith. What’s the result? The harvest comes. God blesses them. God restores their fortunes. They reap with shouts of joy. They come home bringing their sheaves shouting for joy!

I think we’ve lost this connection that hard work and risk have with faith. I think we’ve often become entitled Christians who think we shouldn’t have to sow in tears, but that we can just sow in ease or worse yet someone else can sow for us and we can sit back and reap all the benefits. Sometimes we almost think that God being gracious means he owes us rewards and we can just sit around and expect them to fall in our lap. As long as I pray for a thing, then God is bound to give it to me.

But here we see God’s people working hard. They are taking a risk. They are stepping out from their comfort, stepping out from their security. They are saying, “If I want God to receive glory through my life then I can’t just sit here.” And they are able to endure the hard things because their eyes are on the goal. They aren’t looking down at their work, but rather they’re looking up at the objective. They have this laser focus on God receiving glory and on them receiving joy and because they’re focused on it, they endure all the difficulties.

If you have your eye steadily focused on the goal you can endure the difficulties. This is precisely the example Jesus Christ displayed for us.

“[Look] to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” - Hebrews 12:2

Jesus Christ was willing to sow in tears because he was looking for the joy that was on the other side. This shows us two things extremely clearly. The way Jesus sowed in tears was more than just a little hard work and risk. It was a cross. It was giving up anything he treasured on earth and giving up his own life. Sowing in tears isn’t something that you can do simply for 40 hours on weekdays and then kick back on weekends. It’s something you will do all the way to your grave.

Secondly, the prize that Jesus was focused on was joy. He went to the cross thinking “I’m enduring this for joy. I’m enduring this for joy. I go through this and on the other side is joy.” What an incredible motivator! His motivation isn’t just “Do this thing because you’re supposed to” or “Do what’s right because everyone is watching and they expect you to”. He knows there is joy on the other side and that’s what he’s straining towards. This is why Paul is able to say in Philippians:

“One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 3:13-14

Look, I’m not here to tell you - simply try harder, work more, and do better. I’m telling you to focus on the goal. The goal of joy with Christ forever. The goal of pleasing the one who gave his life for you. Don’t catch yourself looking down at all the work and only thinking about your tears. Remind yourself, “I’m enduring this for joy. I’m enduring this for joy. I go through this and on the other side is joy.”

God is a God who loves to restore our fortunes. Restoring people who’ve been lost is what he does. He wants to give you joy. And the greater the restoration, the greater glory he receives. He loves to send streams into deserts and make them burst forth with life again. And the way he accomplishes this will inevitably be through our tears. But joy is on the other side. Press on.

Prayer