God, the Restorer of His People (Psalm 126)
The psalm itself does not contain any information as to when it was written, apart from being composed after a time of great deliverance (v. 1) and yet during a time of captivity (v. 4). Therefore the psalmist was both experiencing a degree of bondage and recalling a previous restoration from oppression. His practice is one that we should emulate; when we are in current difficulties we should remember what God did in the past. This can be done at a personal level through the use of a diary or other form of recording (it is amazing how much of the Lord’s work in our lives has been forgotten by us, and this would not have happened if we had made a written note of these occasions). It can also be done at a larger level by reading books that detail the activities of God in days of revival, whether in the Reformation of the sixteenth century or in the Great Awakening of the seventeenth century or in the many revivals of the nineteenth century. There have been revivals in the twentieth century in Scandinavia, China, Africa, South America and other places. Reading about them can inspire us to pray to God to give the same blessing again.
The psalm divides into two sections: verses 1 to 3 describe the effects of the restoration; verses 4 to 6 describe the need for ongoing recovery. Although the psalmist is rejoicing in what the Lord has done in delivering Israel, he realises that God has to continue giving benefits to his people. Therefore he prays that the Lord would deal with the situation regarding the annual harvests because the land would not have been maintained during the years of trouble. He prays for the rains that the farmers would need in order for there to be a harvest, and these plentiful rainfalls become a picture to him of what God can do for his people in a spiritual sense.
Relevance to the people after the Exile
It is easy to see why this psalm, whenever it was written, was included in this small collection of ‘songs of ascents/degrees’. The connection between this psalm and the restoration from the Babylonian Exile is obvious because the psalm describes a restoration from captivity, which made verse 1 to 3 relevant to them. There were also many periods after the return from the Exile when the pilgrims, on visiting Jerusalem for the annual feasts, would be acutely aware of the bondage in which God’s people were, which made verses 4 to 6 relevant to them. The initial prospects of full recovery had not been realised for a number of reasons which can be deduced from other biblical books.
(1) The historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah detail the slow process of restoration within the land that followed on from their restoration to the land.
(2) The prophecy of Haggai, written shortly after the return from the Exile, informs us that many of the people developed wrong priorities, focusing on their own houses rather than on rebuilding the Lord’s House. Their wrong focus was a worrying development among people who had so recently experienced the Lord’s gracious power. Part of the Lord’s response to their wrong priorities was to give them failed harvests, which fits with the situation described in the second half of the psalm. ‘Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labours’ (Hag. 1:10-11). Failure to put God first resulted in the experience of deliverance being hindered.
A further detail that Haggai condemns was the discouraging attitude of those who could remember the grand temple that existed before the Exile. They imagined that nothing better could happen, yet this new temple would have the greater blessing of having the Saviour come to it in person. Discouragement from the old caused the experience of captivity to remain.
Haggai called the people to repentance and there was a spiritual reformation among them. How long it lasted for is unknown. Yet the path for continuing to experience divine deliverance is clear: put the things of God first and other benefits will be given.
(3) The prophecy of Malachi, written about 100 years after the return from the Exile, states that the nation, including its political and religious leaders, were despising the worship of God by offering unacceptable sacrifices and withholding their tithes. In addition, divorce was becoming common. God, through his prophet, promised them great blessings if they repented of their sins and put him first in their lives.
Therefore, when the pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem to keep the feasts of Israel, they would be very conscious of the necessity of devotion to the Lord. The history of their people and its current experience were powerful reminders of the consequences of failing to remain dedicated to the Lord and his cause. It is also clear that we have a similar set of reminders. We know from church history the great things that God did for our forefathers. Even the number of church buildings point to the thousands of people who in previous generations gathered to worship God. In the Highlands, God gave great spiritual prosperity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; today it has almost gone. Therefore this psalm has relevance to us, in praying for God’s restoration of his cause, for at the same time we are encouraged by recalling some of his great times of spiritual blessing in the past in our own country and throughout other parts of the world today.
The effects of previous restoration (vv. 1-3)
The first point that the psalmist mentions is that the previous restoration had been the work of the Lord. If it is a reference to the end of the Exile, then there were several secondary causes that the psalmist could have mentioned, such as the political policies of Cyrus (his was to let captive peoples return to their own land whereas the policy of Babylon had been to transport them away from their land) or the prayers of God’s people (Daniel prayed for the restoration of the Israelites because he realised that God’s promised period of judgement of seventy years was coming to an end). Both these secondary causes and many others were under the control of God. At one level, it was appropriate to acknowledge the kindness of Cyrus or to admire the faithfulness of Daniel. Yet they were not to elevated above the sovereign decisions of the Lord; he alone is to be given the glory for the restoration.
The next point to note is that the Lord’s deliverance was incredible, far beyond their greatest expectations. He overthrew in a night the empire that kept them in bondage and overruled the decrees of its replacement in order to set his people free. Their experience reminds us that nothing is too hard for the Lord. He has done similar things throughout history and he can do the same today. We are to expect great things from such a mighty God.
Thirdly, the consequence of this great deliverance was a noticeable transformation which was so different that the surrounding nations concluded it could only have been given by the Lord. I think this is a point worth thinking about. The response of the Israelites was a witness to the greatness of their Deliverer. On the journey to Zion, the people of the places they travelled through observed their great joy. No doubt they asked the Israelites what had happened. They could also hear the words of the songs of praise offered by the Jews and concluded that their God was a great God. These nations were impressed by the difference in the attitude and outlook of the returning exiles.
God delighted in giving this display of his restoring grace before the eyes of the nations. It balances what he had previously shown to the nations with reference to his backsliding people. Concerning Jerusalem and the judgement that he would bring on it at the onset of the Exile, he says in Jeremiah 22:8-9: ‘And many nations will pass by this city, and every man will say to his neighbour, “Why has the LORD dealt thus with this great city?” And they will answer, “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and worshiped other gods and served them.”’ Their devastation was great, but great was their restoration. When revival comes to our nation, God will ensure it will be in the headlines. Nobody will conclude that he is not involved. This prospect is very comforting; it means that God was delighted to be publicly identified with those whom he had previously chastised, and he will be the same with us.
Features should be seen in us as well
These features described in the psalm happen whenever an individual is converted from sin or restored from backsliding. Every Christian affirms that his salvation from the deadness of sin is entirely of the Lord. God may have used circumstances in providence, prayers and exhortations of family and friends, sermons by particular preachers and suitable Christian literature, but the praise goes to God. The constant response of every believer should be to thank God for delivering him or her from slavery to sin and giving to each of them a salvation that will climax in the new heavens and new earth. We have heard of how John Newton had a plaque placed where he could see it frequently, and it said, ‘Remember thou wast a bondsman in the land of Egypt.’
Similarly, when a Christian is restored from backsliding, God may use the same means, but again the glory must be given to God. Sometimes we imagine that what the world sees in a penitent believer is inconsistency, that the unconverted think he is a hypocrite. They may think that of a backsliding believer as long as he backslides, but they are astounded at the way the Lord forgives and restores those of his people who fall and then repent. The world observes their regret, their humility, their love to God, and it is astonished at the greatness of God’s mercy.
This can happen, too, when a church community experiences the restoring grace of God. Those who don’t belong to it are affected by the great mercy that God displays. In fact, this is one of the distinctions between what is termed a ‘revival’ and what can be called a ‘time of blessing’, although the same words and phrases can be used of both events. A revival not only affects the church by increasing its numbers and enlarging its experience of grace, it also affects the society in which the church exists and causes sinful practices to decrease. This is what we need. Thankfully, there have been conversions in the churches recently. Yet our communities are still departing from biblical standards. We need a revival.
Desiring more of God’s grace (vv. 4-6)
The first aspect of this desire is the intensity of one’s prayer life. It is likely that the psalmist personally was in a reasonably healthy state of soul, otherwise he would not have identified the problems. Yet he knew that it was not enough that he was making progress. As long as other Israelites were in captivity, so was he. He knew what God could do, as the illustration he uses indicates.
In the southern area of Israel, the Negev, farmers would sow the seed of the future harvest. Such work was wearisome, difficult, and tiresome because of the heat of the sun. Yet they sowed with the expectancy that their labours would be rewarded when the rains came. Today, if you drive in the Negev, there are warning signs to drivers concerning flash floods that occur when these rains come. These rainfalls are not trickles of water; rather the clouds pour down torrents. Isaiah refers to this phenomenon in Isaiah 44:3: ‘For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground.’ This is what we want from the Lord; we are grateful for the trickles that we see, but we want flash floods of his grace that will sweep away all the useless things that have been erected as substitutes. It is good to imagine a flash flood sign outside all the places that are currently opposed to God’s will; of course, it is a sign that mercy is coming.
Yet the floods in the Negev would be of no value if the seed had not been sown. Similarly, the seed of the gospel has to be sown by us. Obviously there is an application here to preachers, but the gospel should be sown by all of us. We sow it in the offerings we give, in the words we say to others (mainly in our families and to our neighbours, but occasionally to others), in the prayers that we bring to God. Revival is not dependant on our preparatory work, but it is unlikely to happen without it. Such work is evidence that God has begun reviving his people, which is the usual order of events before he brings his blessing to the world.
The feature that marks the sowing is tears. I suspect that this feature is rare today, although there are many reasons for tears. The smallness of our churches, the slight that is done to the Saviour, the failure of humans to live for God’s glory, the awful destiny of hell are but some reasons. But these reasons are outside of us, and we will only have tears if our inside is sympathetic to what is happening outside. We need compassionate hearts, sympathetic hearts, above all Christlike hearts (the more Christlike we are, the more tears we will have). Our prayers and preaching will include wet eyes. I don’t know if Bunyan had such a character in his books, but it would be good if each believer could be addressed as ‘Mr Wet Eye’ or ‘Mrs. Wet Eye’.
The seed is also described as ‘precious’. The seed of the gospel is precious because of what it cost to procure it. Each seed of the gospel was paid for by the infinite cost of the Saviour’s sacrifice. The price that he paid so that we could be sowers is beyond calculation. It is also precious because we have experienced its saving blessings in our own souls. The most astonishing spectacle in the world today is a Christian who has stopped appreciating the greatness of God’s salvation.
If the dominant feature of the sowing is tears, the leading feature of the harvest is joy. ‘Joy’ is one of the recurring words in the Book of Acts. Acts 8:5-8: ‘Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did. For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city.’
Acts 13:48-52: in Antioch of Pisidia: ‘And when the Gentiles heard this [the preaching of the gospel], they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region…. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.’
Acts 15:3: ‘So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.’
There will be rejoicing locally when such a revival occurs. As individuals we know are converted, as family members are brought in to the kingdom, as we hear the songs of Zion on the lips of those who used to sing about other matters, as we sense the sweet presence of the wooing Christ in our services, there will be great joy.
There will be rejoicing universally when the final harvest of all the sowing takes place, on that occasion when all the redeemed stand before Christ. Then, as Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps”’ (John 4:36-37). On that day, the full effect of each act of sowing will be revealed, and we will see that each seed produced a bundle of sheaves. The seed of prayer, the seed of giving, the seed of preaching, the seed of a quiet word here and there, will all produce a bountiful harvest. And our greatest source of joy will be to observe and share the joy of the Sower, Jesus Christ, as he who sowed in tears for a short time will have great joy eternally in what he will have reaped.
On that day, we will see what God has done with our tears that he collected in his bottles (Ps. 56:8). Of course, there is more than one reason for our tears. Yet it is a question to ask ourselves: ‘How many bottles has God filled with our tears?’ Because I suspect that our joy will be in proportion to our tears, whether at a local level here or at the universal level there.
We will conclude by a reference to McCheyne. On one occasion, after McCheyne’s death, a visitor to the church asked the beadle what was the secret of McCheyne’s success. The beadle took the visitor down to where McCheyne’s desk was and asked the visitor to sit at it, put his hands on the desk, put his head in his hands, and weep. Many a tear was shed by McCheyne during his short ministry in Dundee, but great has been his ongoing joy since he went to heaven over one hundred and sixty years ago.
It will be wonderful if very soon the words of this psalm would not only be a prayer to use for our community but would also be a promise fulfilled in our community.