Psalm 126-127

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0:00 We are glad that you're here today. And we like to do a time that we call a call to worship that has been like to say is a demarcation line where we leave the rest of the world and the rest of the week behind and we come now to focus on being in God's presence, to worship Him, to hear from Him. And we do that through a reading of a psalm, these psalms of a sense we're going through

0:31 now and this is Psalm 125, a pilgrimage psalm. The people who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, never shaken, lasting forever. Mountains surround Jerusalem. That's how the Lord surrounds His people from now until forever from now. The wicked rod won't remain in the land given to the righteous so that they don't use their hands to do anything wrong. Lord, do good to people who are good, to people whose hearts are right.

1:04 But as for those people who turn to their own twisted ways, may the Lord march them off with other evil doers. Peace be on Israel. Let's pray together. Hey Lord, thanks for the chance to be here, to be your people. Would you come and love us and convict us as only you can, enliven and embolden us?

1:36 We say, Holy Spirit, you're welcome here. Indeed, you're the reason that we have come. So meet with us this morning. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Hey, glad you made it. I don't know what you had to go through to get here, but sometimes getting up and like assembled and out of the house on a Sunday is a lot of work. And if that was a lot of work for you, I'm glad that you made it here this morning.

2:10 What we've been looking at for the last couple of weeks, as Terry mentioned, is this group of Psalms in the Psalter. There's 15 of them. And they get grouped together in this group that scholars call the songs of a sense. And we feel like they are songs of pilgrimage to the presence of God in the place of Jerusalem or the temple. We feel like they get used as family groups, move together towards Jerusalem for high feast

2:47 days. And we feel like they also get used liturgically in the temple as people prepare to move into the presence of God. So these Psalms, the Psalms of a sense, are you can see they move thematically from people starting in other countries and moving towards Jerusalem and then celebrating in the presence of God. And I feel like that's a good place for us to be as a group of families at this time

3:21 of year thinking about what are we headed towards? Where is God in relation to the place that we're moving and the things we're beginning? What's our relationship to Him as we move towards those things? And I'm going to put two of these Psalms together this morning, Psalm 126 and Psalm 127. But before we look at those, I want to look at this one little story in Matthew. The story is actually recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke, which we call the Synoptic

3:56 Gospels. John's Gospel is stylistically different, but Matthew, Mark and Luke all record the same story. But I'd like to look at Matthew's recording. If you have a paper copy of the Scriptures, Matthew is like more than three quarters of the way through your copy. It's the first book of the New Testament. It goes, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. And I'm looking at Matthew chapter eight. There's a story here in Matthew chapter eight, verse 23.

4:27 Like I mentioned, it's in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. But in Matthew, he puts it in this context where he's been doing some teaching, but also you can see if you look at the headings of chapter eight, really going into chapter seven. At the end of seven, he's been doing some teaching among his own people. And it finishes with them questioning the way he's teaching and the style of his teaching.

4:59 They say he's teaching differently as one who has authority, and they begin to wonder where does his authority come from? Just real briefly, a rabbi at the time of Jesus, most often that was teaching in a synagogue or outside of the temple, would spend his time quoting the rabbis he had learned from. So he would maybe read a scripture and then teach with the rabbis before him had taught. And Jesus would teach differently. He would read a scripture and then announce a new interpretation or truth of it.

5:35 You might remember times when Jesus says, you have heard it said, but I say to you. You might remember times when Jesus said, the prophet Isaiah says this, and now this is fulfilled in your hearing. This would be new and a little bit radical for the hearers of Jesus. They would start to say, who does this guy think he is? He's not quoting any of the rabbis we know. He's making a new interpretation. He's teaching with authority, and it made his own people uncomfortable. I just want us to see that. So they had started to question his authority.

6:05 But the people that get it, look at the heading at the beginning of chapter 8. Jesus cleanses the leper. The leper's get it. And then look down. The faith of the centurion, the naju, he gets it. Jesus is always when he's talking to his people, it seems like he's having to fight uphill and explain what he's doing. And he's the people who get it the most are the people who are outside of his people. And that would put him up for danger.

6:38 His own people, the Jewish leaders, would be threatened and confused. They would not like that he was hanging out with the people he was hanging out with. I want you to see that Jesus in general would be under pressure. Like lots of reasons for stress and anxiety in the life of Jesus. He's running against the norms. And he's often misunderstood.

7:10 And so when we get to verse 23, he's finished teaching. He's had to teach from a boat. The people were back him up. And he tells his disciples, hey guys, let's take this boat and sail it across the lake. And remember that several of his disciples, the young men who were following Jesus and learning his way of interpreting the scripture, several of them had come out of lives of being fishers. They knew how to run a boat.

7:40 They probably had fished on this actual lake before they were familiar with it. And so it's not a big deal for him to say, hey guys, let's go to the other side of the lake. And he then lays down and goes to sleep. Look at this story. When he got into the boat, his disciples followed him and behold, there arose a great storm on the sea so that the boat was being swamped by waves. But he was asleep. He's in a pretty deep sleep.

8:11 If it's a little like fisher boat in Israel sailing across the lake and the boat is being swamped by waves. You know, it's a lake. It's not the ocean. So for there to be waves on the lake that are swamping the boat, it is a serious storm. I don't know. I mean, I guess that the wind blows the water in a big lake. I don't know. I haven't spent time on lakes.

8:43 But I know that there's not like waves like at the Atlantic. This storm is like pushing up the water and it's coming into the boat and Jesus is like asleep. Some of us can't get to sleep with the sound machine on and the air conditioning just right and the pillow in the right spot and the covers carefully placed.

9:17 Some of us can't get to sleep no matter how hard. Jesus is asleep on the boat in the middle of a storm with a life of stress and pressure. Jesus is like just out. And in verse 25 and they went and woke him saying, now, well, look what they said. They went and woke him saying, hey, save us.

9:49 We are dying. And I was thinking about the story, thinking about how long do they wait before they go and wake him up? Like how many times do they go? Okay, surely this wave will have, let's just see. No, he's still sleeping. Okay. Right? They go, hey, you go and check on. Yeah, no, he's still sleeping. Cool. They're like bailing water out.

10:20 And at some point they're like, we are like losing the battle here. So when they go and wake him up, I don't know if they drew straws to be like, who's going to nudge Jesus and get him to wake up. But when they go to wake him up, it's not, hey, Jesus, wake up. There's a storm going on. It's not, hey, Jesus. There's your pale man, we're all bailing the water, right? It's, we are dying and we need you to save us, right?

10:56 And then, and he said to them, why are you afraid or you of little faith? And I have misinterpreted this story in my life because I didn't pay all the way attention to what Jesus said. And I read into it, there's this phrase theologians use called isogenesis where you read your experience into the story of the text instead of exegesis where you take the meaning out

11:29 of the story of the text. I was doing isegesis. I was putting my experience into the text. No, my experience is, my experience is the ones who receive love are the ones who receive love are the ones who do a really great job. And if you do a really great job for God, you get extra love. That's nobody's fault. That's just my own. So what I like to do all the time, my default failure is to perform in order to earn the

12:00 love of God. And when I saw this, why are you afraid or you of little faith? My eyes of Jesus was he's rebuking them for not handling the problem themselves, their failures. They should have let him sleep and handled the storm themselves. But did you notice that's me reading my own failures into the story of the text?

12:31 Look at the words and don't put anything on it. This doesn't say, why did you wake me? Save yourselves, you fools. Jesus says, what? Why are you afraid? Oh, wait. Good move, you need salvation. You came to the right place. But why are you carrying fear?

13:02 You don't think I can handle this? Why are you afraid? Oh, you of little faith. Then he rose, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. I mean, I think like I can imagine how Hollywood would do the picture of Jesus rebuking the waves and see it would look something like Gandalf with a big sword and he's like lightning

13:36 strikes it and it like boom, right? Like everything calms down. And maybe it went that way, but also I didn't have to. Jesus could have come up and said, hey, cut it out. And then the things, right. And men marveled saying, what sort of man is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him. Let's acknowledge at this moment Jesus is terrifying.

14:07 Like he is, they wake him up and he's been sleeping, obviously a deep sleep. Last night I, West and I rode bikes from our house to Camp in real estate and my friend of ours was having a tailgate. We hung out there for a couple. It took us about 45 minutes to find them because news, there was a lot of people out there if you weren't out there. So we rode around and then we rode back. It was miserable, hot. I don't know if you were outside at all yesterday, but goodness.

14:41 When I came home and I was exhausted, like I wanted to watch the Cardinals, my baseball team and I was like having trouble keeping my eyes open. Then I got up and the day was not over yet. I still had to be dad in the house, but I could feel how grumpy I was. And when I get tired and a little grumpy, I'm just short and a little bit just unreasonable. People are like, why is he mad? He has no reason to be mad. And they woke Jesus up and he says, oh, why are you afraid or you have little faith?

15:15 As kind as he is, you get a little bit like this, right? And then the guy that you just woke up stands up and rebukes the wind and the waves and they listen and you're like, Jesus is scary at this moment. I want you to see two things. Jesus is the one to come to when you save and he also holds all power and authority. So come carefully. Come respectfully.

15:45 Come for salvation when you are in peril. But there is no need to carry fear. This is what our Psalms get to for the morning. That's why I put them together. Our Psalms of ascent. Psalm 126 and 127.

16:28 126 goes. I like the heading, the title, it says restore our fortunes, oh Lord. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. When the Lord restored the fortunes of our people, it was like, we couldn't believe it. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, it was like a dream.

16:59 We couldn't believe that he had done it for us. You can think about the stories when they leave Egypt and they take the riches of Egypt with them. When AI comes to attack them on the road and they defeat him. When they walk around the walls of Jericho and the great walled city falls down in front of them.

17:30 When they walk in and claim vineyards, other people have cultivated. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, when he gave us what he had promised, it was almost too good to be true. It was like a dream. And then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy.

18:03 And then they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. And Lord, it was astounding to the people around us how well you cared for us, how you went ahead of us. The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad. So then restore our fortunes, oh Lord, like streams and nega.

18:41 You see, they start saying, hey, we remember when you restored our fortunes. I was at a little conference for a couple days this week. And one of the guys that was leading a session, talking about something I don't remember what he was talking about, but I wrote down this thing that he said, because he said, oh, you're not individuals, you're persons. I was like, he's way smarter than me.

19:15 So I trust it. I didn't write it off immediately. I just listened. He said, you're not individuals, you're persons. Persons arise out of a network of relationships. They celebrate interdependence. You are not and cannot be an island. You are a person in all of its complexity and nuance. You are who you are because of where you came from and the relationships that you build

19:48 today and the provision and confusion that arises from all of the stuff that comes to you. You are not an individual. You are a person. One of the great characteristics of the people of God in the story of Scripture is their notion of the corporate. The Psalmist in 126.

20:20 When the Psalmist remembers that God restores the fortunes of Zion, it is perhaps not fortunes restored to him individually, but because he belongs to the corporate, he can remember and celebrate the corporate provision. God has given corporate provision that he is the benefactor of.

20:52 I began to ask what's a corollary for me and the first thing that came to mind was a couple of years ago I was telling my parents that I had remembered there was four of us in our family and I can remember I was the second oldest, so kind of in that middle thing. I don't know why this is a distinct memory for me, but I have a distinct memory of going grocery shopping with the family on more than one occasion and some of my other siblings always throwing whatever they wanted in the basket and me thinking in my head, don't you

21:28 know we have to spend as little as possible that it was a virtue for me if I could cost the family almost nothing. That would be better. I remember telling them that story, my parents, a couple years ago and they of course communicated that they were sorry that I was in that spot and then also said that we were the family of four of us living on around $15,000 a year.

22:00 My mom made all our clothes and our bread for the house and I was asking, I was thinking about what's the corollary for me, the fortunes that have been given to Zion and I thought about my dad moving our family down here because he had one, two families that wanted to start a church and they could find 15 grand a year to give him and he knocked on doors in Lake Mary as it was just developing and I was thinking about that God let that church work for our

22:37 family. Oh Lord you gave fortunes to Zion. You have provided. So often when we begin to try and approach a posture of gratitude I feel like when we say, when we start to say, Lord what have you done for me lately?

23:09 One of the great questions I had when I sat out in seminary is how does God see me and what's my responsibility to people and the more that you read the story of Scripture the more you see God looking at people through the lines of generations. That when he considers me he also considers the provision he gave to my parents to raise me and bring me to this place and I have an opportunity for gratitude looking at the places that God has platformed for me to grow into who I'm becoming.

23:40 That if I want to move towards gratitude and I look merely at what have you done for me lately I will find blessing but I will be missing an opportunity to develop a heart of gratitude and what we'll see security. So I just want you to think about that as it says, the Lord has done great things for us and we are glad. I want to invite you to expand your general notion of the great things that God has done

24:10 for you. Of course families are not perfect but you are not an individual and you arrive at this moment out of a great network of personhood and the goodness of God is sprinkled all through that network. Praise God that you find yourself here today. Okay, restore our fortunes now, oh Lord, like streams in the negative it's a famously arid

24:40 and dry space and the solomest is imagining great streams coming through it. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. It's okay to need salvation. It's okay to sow in tears but don't carry fear. Any your tears assume and know that the God who brought your person to this moment will

25:14 provide for your person in the future. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out with weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy bringing sheaves with him. Now look down further unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain.

25:46 It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest eating the bread of anxious toil. Do you see? Like you if you are out there sowing seeds in tears. Assuming it's your job to keep bailing out the boat over and over again.

26:18 And because of your fear you wouldn't bother to wake the sleeping saviour. Your bailing of water will be in vain. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest eating the bread of anxious toil.

26:53 Oh why are you afraid? Good-thel. For he gives his beloved sleep. I don't know exactly what happened next in that boat but here's what I'd like to imagine. They worked up the nerve, afraid for their life to ask Jesus to save them.

27:33 He does. They are terrified of him but carry no more fear. There's this deep respect. Who is this one who can solve our problems? And the fear, I'd like to imagine Jesus puts his head back down on the cushion and goes to sleep. And then the rest of them join him. And they sleep without fear on the boat with Jesus.

28:09 Look I don't, I mean I know some of the stories in the room but I don't know all of the stories in the room. I don't have to know your story to know that this is true. We, like the Psalmist, are the people of God. We arrive at this moment with blessing of God in our wake.

28:46 And blessing in our future. We have storms that will require us to call out for saving. If we try and save ourselves we do it in vain and we eat the bread of anxiety but when we call to Jesus to save us we get to go down in sleep, rest and protection.

29:17 I hope we can be people of that kind of faith. This season of our lives. Hey Lord, make us into people who looking at your provision expected again. Lord, make us into people who respecting your ability call to you respectfully for salvation and leave off fear and anxiety.

29:53 Hey Lord, as we move into another time of worship this morning would you call to our minds the blessing you have given ourselves our personhood that brings us to today. So that we have a grateful appreciation of what you'll do in the future. We ask it in Jesus name and for his sake amen.

30:23 Thank you.