Reading: Psalm 126
If only we could
see, laughter and joy would fill our mouths when we think about the
church of our Lord Jesus Christ. I realize that is not the way
many speak of the church today. In fact it is quite popular to speak
disparagingly of the church as if God's great mission in the world
had failed.
I am not suggesting
that there are not reasons to be concerned–there are. But I am
suggesting that there is much more to the picture. Psalm 126 gives
us a glimpse into the picture.
When
the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who
dreamed. 2Our mouths were filled with laughter, our
tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, "The
LORD has done great things for them." 3The LORD has
done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
4Restore
our fortunes, LORD, like streams in the Negev. 5Those who
sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. 6Those who go
out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
Joy at the Time
of Ingathering
This psalm speaks of
the time when the captive people of God were released from Babylon
and returning to the land of Zion. The people returning were poor and
displaced. They were unsettled. Yet there was joy; joy unspeakable;
joy like a dream; joy that could only be expressed in a mouth full of
laughter and singing. This was a time of ingathering—ingathering
of God's people from where they had been displaced, dispersed, and
dispossessed.
Their prayer was that
the Lord would restore their fortunes like the cracked dry
stream-beds in the dessert. When the rainy season comes, that
which was cracked and dry is now the very source of life for all
around. But notice they weren't waiting to be filled with joy
until they were the flowing stream. They were filled with joy because
the Lord was gathering them in and now they were praying with joy
that they would be restored to become the source of life to all
around.
“What does any
of this have to do with the church?”
I'm glad you asked. The
prophets looked forward to this time of gathering God's people from
where they had been scattered. Here are just a couple from numerous
examples.
Hear
the word of the LORD, you nations; proclaim it in distant
coastlands: “He who scattered Israel will gather
them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.”
(Jeremiah 31:10)
He
will raise a banner for the nations and gather the
exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from
the four quarters of the earth. (Isaiah 11:12)
Notice where they will
be gathered from? From the four quarters of the earth. In the
scattering and regathering of God's people, there is a transformation
envisioned by the prophets. They left the and rather ethnically
Jewish and they are re-gathered from the nations of the world.
This of course is fulfilled in the Gospel as the Gospel goes into the
world gathering Gentiles as well as Jews so that all Israel will be
saved (Romans 11:25-26).
Do You See?
If you are a believer
in the glorious Lord Jesus Christ, you are one of the disinherited
and dispossessed that God has brought back to the land. God has
gathered you into his inheritance. Paul prays for the church in
Ephesians that we would see this.
18
I pray that the eyes of your heart
may be enlightened in order that you may know the
hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious
inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his
incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same
as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he
raised Christ from the dead. (Ephesians 1:18-19)
What is the hope to
which He has called you? Certainly heaven, but more than that. He has
made you part of a family. He has restored you to a place in which
you now have an inheritance. You are part of something not only much
bigger than yourself, but something eternal. This hope is a community
of love in which sins are forgiven, offenses are born with patience,
and humility guides our interactions.
Do you see the riches
of His glorious inheritance in His holy people? Do you see that in
Christ you have been joined to a family, a chosen people, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may
declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his
wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9)? Do you see that as a part of God's
holy nation you have received a hundred times as much “houses or
brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or
fields” (Matthew 19:29)?
Do you see the power
he has made available to you–that same life-giving power that
raised Christ from the dead–in order that you can be transformed
like the streams in the Negev? You
can be transformed so that you are no longer a dry, fruitless tree
(Isaiah 56:3) but now a life-giving, fruit-bearing tree? Our
lives are to be transformed by the
river of Living Water that flows from Jesus Christ into a life giving
agents in this broken world.
Like the people in
Psalm 126, we may still be poor and displaced in many ways. Our lives
and churches may still be unsettled. But our mouths should be filled
with joy, laughter, and singing because we are no longer displaced,
dispersed, and dispossessed. We
have been restored to the inheritance God has for us! If only we
could see, laughter and joy would fill our mouths when we think about
the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Love the Gospel, Live
the Gospel, Advance the Gospel,
Jerry
