Psalms 126 Undignified Laughter

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service.

This is a sermon series on the Psalms of Ascent by Pastor Don Filsack. Let's listen in.

Welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and we are going to get started. So if you can find your seats, that would be great. I know more people will be coming in throughout the morning.

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There's a plastic, a plastic bin right next to the black box back there, where if you're not going to use that envelope this week, we can just reuse those and recycle them.

So that does help us out. And remember that any gifts that are given that are marked expansion fund will go towards our eventual goal of building a building.

And I want to point out that we have recently migrated our database, and in that process, we have lost some of your email addresses.

And so through that process, what would really help us out a lot is if over the next few weeks, if you would do us a favor, and actually

I know some many of you that are sitting here, you've been here already. You filled out that connection card before. If you could fill out that connection card again, even while I'm introducing and talking about the text, if you took just a minute to give us your name, address, email address, and phone number, just so we can make sure that we have the best way of getting in touch with you.

That would help us out significantly. So we'd like to see a stack of those connection cards this week. And the more that we get in the next few weeks, the more we can make sure that the information we have currently is accurate.

Again, that's our main way of communicating with you is through email. And if we have the wrong email address, then you're not going to be able to continue to get the information.

So let us know by filling out that card and then we can just check over and against what we have in our records and that would be very helpful for us.

Well, obviously it's a little bit different. We don't usually have cake and balloons up front in church.

And so today, this very day marks our sixth birthday as a church.

So happy birthday, Recast. Six years. And it's pretty cool.

The April 19th falls on a Sunday, just like it did six years ago. So six years ago on April 19th, it was a

Sunday morning. That Sunday morning, I woke up and was prepared to go to the basement of Greg and Jen Nitzel.

Greg and Jen Nitzel went to their basement. We set up some folding chairs. We had this very same table there present and I proceeded to preach to 16 people.

We had 16 adults and how many kids were there? I think it was 15 kids there at that very first service.

We ran a little kids program, basically with our own children sitting on our laps while we watched a video and kind of talked with them about scriptural things.

And then we went downstairs. We took communion there that first Sunday. And honestly,

I have to confess that to some degree it kind of felt like we were playing church.

Like we were in the basement. That's where the kids play, right? And we were in the basement and set up the folding chairs and all of that stuff.

And it was like standing up and preaching to 16 people and we had no idea what God was going to do.

And obviously what we're doing here this morning is quite different than just a small gathering in a basement of somebody's house.

We knew at that point from that first meeting that success would somehow look like some numerical growth.

Now, you know that it's not all about numbers, but we had we did not anticipate that we would be just that 16 people meeting on a regular basis forever and we wouldn't grow.

I mean obviously the point of the kingdom of God is that it continues to grow and that God continues to reach out. But we just didn't know that eventually we would outgrow the first facility that we met at there on Red Arrow and eventually that we would be here where we are today.

And God has indeed been faithful and one of his one of the points of God's faithfulness one of the cool things is just even the way that he's been faithful to bring up I think texts at appropriate times for us as I as I go through and I'm you know my commitment is to continue through books of the bible and continue just through chapter and verse and kind of keep moving on.

And I don't I'm not a particularly good planner as far as I do plan out my my my sermons always in advance kind of get caught up and then spend a day like really going over what

I want to preach again over the next year. And um, so I didn't plan this text. God is celebrating with us in a sense of providing a text of celebration this morning.

The very text Psalm 126 that we're going to be looking at this morning speaks of shouts of joy, laughter, in the process of testifying to the great things that the

Lord has done. That's what our text is. It talks about gladness. It talks about hope for the future and harvest.

And that's what we're celebrating here this morning. It's an awesome thing. And so the Lord has indeed done great things for us.

He's granted us the privilege of seeing many come to faith in Christ. We've had baptisms. We've grown in faith together.

We've grown in community together. We've grown in service together. There has been laughter. There have been shouts of joy.

There has been gladness. And I want to point out to you that the one who has been restored by the

Lord is indeed one that ought to be joyful and enthusiastic.

We need to celebrate what God has done. And we have every reason to pray for and believe that God will continue to reap a harvest through us.

So let's open to Psalm 126. Um, if you need a Bible just raise your hand and somebody will bring you a

Bible. Um, Mike has some in his hand back here and if you need one, uh, you don't have an app or or some other means to follow along.

Um, that's helpful. But Psalm 126, uh, God's word for us.

I think it's really cool how he picks out these texts and brings them alive to us, um, at the proper time.

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.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, we rejoice in the work that you have done here in our midst.

Uh, it has been an awesome six years of seeing you move and seeing you do, uh, your work here through us and in us and among us and here in this community an opportunity for us to reach out and to share your love with our neighbors and those out in our community.

Father, I praise you just for the many avenues of ministry that you have provided and the way that you have used us.

Father, I pray that this text would come alive to us this morning as we just see so clearly what it is that you have planned for us this morning in this text of being glad and rejoicing for the great things that you have done.

May you receive the honor. May you receive the glory. May you receive all the credit for the good that has come out of Recast Church in these six years.

And Father, we look forward to many more years of your, uh, service through us. Father, your work and your ministry to this community for more souls saved, for more baptisms, for more opportunities to see people come to understand who you are and what you have done.

So we look forward to this and rejoice. We have an opportunity to lift our voices before you.

Father, I pray that you would receive this as thankfulness and praise and gratitude this morning in Jesus name.

Amen. I'll encourage you to get comfortable. Um, thanks a lot to these guys for leading us in worship.

Grateful for them. And, um, keep your Bibles open to the few verses of Psalm chapter 126 as we're going to dive in and dig into that text.

Um, remember that if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice, I've got my little emergency supplies up here, you know, just as that sugar, sugar buzz, you know, that crash happens.

I've got another piece of cake right here just in case and there's more back there and stuff, whatever you need. Um, to keep your focus on God's word this morning.

That's the point. So, um, remember that the Psalm that we're looking at, Psalm 126, have that open.

We're going to dive in, walk right through it. Remember that it's a part of a pilgrimage playlist. I mentioned that at the start of most of these messages.

Just to refresh our memory that this would have been sung by pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem during the, the annual festivals, uh, like Passover and various celebrations.

They probably would have brought sacrifices with them to go up to the place of the temple. Um, but the majority of the songs so far that we've, we've read, uh, starting in 120, the

Psalms of Ascent go 120 to 134. And so far the ones that we've gone over have talked about trusting

God in the midst of difficulty. Or they've talked about thankfulness to God for deliverance from the midst of difficulty.

But this song, this particular song, is the first one that I would say ratchets things up a notch.

It's going to take things up a notch in regard to our gratitude and our thankfulness. I've mentioned before that the

Psalms, um, utilize human emotion in the process of conveying truth.

And this song is, is going to do so with reckless abandon. It's going to use some undignified phrases for our, our gratitude and our emotional explosiveness towards thankfulness to God in, in a way that probably doesn't show up so well in English.

So when we read the English, you're going, okay, you're toned down. Um, the superlative's down. It's not that crazy. It's not that reckless.

But in Hebrew it is. Some of the things that, that we are, um, being called to and identifying that the people did in worship and praise to God are, um, are crazy stuff.

So we'll talk about it here in a minute. But we start off this song with a look to the past. So if you look at verse one, really verses one and two, when the

Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were, past tense, like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy.

This is a past tense look at the, at the blessings of God. God has indeed blessed us.

At some point in the history, um, the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, the text says.

Zion is a play on words for the people of God in a given location. Um, Zion being, um, the hill that the temple is on in Jerusalem.

It really was the, during this era in this time, the entirety of the city was built on a hill. Um, easily fortified.

The, basically the crest of the hill was completely encircled by the city wall, the city of David at the time.

And so that's the picture. When we talk about Zion, we're talking about that mountain, that hill. But it's, is it the geography then that he's talking about here?

The Lord restored the fortunes of a hill? Well, obviously we know that he's talking about a group of people. We, we might, we use this kind of terminology all the time.

We might talk about geography, but what we really mean is the people. So we might say, Michigan experienced a revival.

Well, you're not talking about the, you know, the, the part of the, the peninsula, you know, that's shaped like a mitten with the upper peninsula, you know, and all that.

We're not talking about the geography. We're talking about the people when we would say, Michigan is experiencing a revival. So that's what it means when it says the

Lord restored the fortunes of Zion. We're meant to think about the people of God in that area and in that location.

But from the beginning, we are told it was the Lord who restored these people.

Notice, God is the one who is credited with the action. The psalmist begins by identifying what he has done, which ought to be the focus of God's people, what

God has done. He's the one getting credit for what has been accomplished in this psalm.

He has restored the fortunes of his people.

The phrase restored the fortunes of is a bit tricky in English, and part of it is, is due to the translation.

When you, when you and I think of fortunes, we most likely, what, like, what comes to your mind, what pops into your mind when

I say the word fortune? It probably has some kind of financial value to it, right?

Has some kind of monetary value, or has something to do with money, right? Fortune is like, I found a, found a bag of gold or something like that, right?

That's fortune, okay? But the phrase in Hebrew is, it's tough, because it's actually a more relational word, and to be technical, the literal translation, and so you can understand why they might translate it differently, is, he has restored to the restoration.

He has restored them to the restoration, okay? In other words, there's a, there's a sense of relational in here.

He has brought them into a good relationship with them. It isn't saying the Lord gave them the winning lottery ticket.

The translation might make you think that, okay? The Lord has restored their fortunes. He's, he's given them all that they had lost, or something like that, or the, or that the

Lord had restored to us a bunch of stuff that had been stolen from us, right? So, somebody's taken and jacked their stuff, and, and it's taken away from us, and God's restored it to us, and brought us, brought it back to us, okay?

So, is that what the text is saying? Okay, he's, you've, you've lost everything, and kind of like the image of Job, or something like that.

Maybe Job would cry this out, you know? He's restored me. He's, he's brought everything back to me.

Well, this is a little bit more relational than that. So, there's something going on here, particularly, relational in this restoration.

To be clear, though, there is an indication that if the Lord is in the process of restoring you, if he is in the process of restoring recast church, if he's in the process of restoring his people, then there's some visible component of that that the text makes clear.

Somehow, in some way, others are going to be able to see with their physical eyes that the people of God are being restored.

When God restores somebody like this, others can see it, and they can see that the

Lord is at work. But let me be careful in saying, I do not believe that it's visible, because there's gold flowing in the streets.

It's not visible because our bank accounts keep growing. It's not visible because, you know, the, the primary visible thing that we're driving $100 ,000 cars, or our wives are having a hard time lifting their hands, because the diamonds are so huge, right?

Is that what it means? Is that what people are gonna see when God is restoring a people? That's not it.

Now, does he, at times, bless his people with riches and with good things like that? Absolutely, but that's not synonymous with the restoration of God.

So, what is it that people can see? We're gonna see that here in verse 2. Verse 2 describes the visible nature of God's restorative acts.

But before we move on straight forward to verse 2, we need to wrap up verse 1. Look at the end of verse 1, with me, when the

Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. He says in verse 2, he's gonna explain that others can see it, but what does it feel like to be in the process of being restored by God?

He's gonna tell us what it's like to be the receiver, the recipient of this restoration, and it's like living the dream.

It's like living in a dream, like when a person receives this type of restoration, they are floating off the ground.

It's like being on cloud nine. It's like nothing can shake me, because God is restoring me.

A person that's in this status, is in this process of being restored by the Lord, has a new purpose, and it's not just a new purpose, but a purpose where there once was dejection.

They have a new hope, and not just a new hope, but a hope where there was at one point complete despair. They have a new gladness, and not just a new gladness, but a gladness where there was only slavery and fear.

In other words, what I'm trying to point out is, it's not like God took your life up to the next level. Okay, like you were going around, you're going pretty good.

Things were going good, and then God has restored you to great, to awesome, or to much better.

No, your life was not going good, when God began his restorative act on you and me. As a matter of fact, it was on a road that ended in condemnation, when he grabbed us, and won us over by the love of his

Son, Jesus Christ. Are you getting what I'm saying? One of the earlier Psalms talked about being like a bird trapped in a snare.

The only thing left to have happen, was for the evil one, the enemy, to come and wrap you up, and take you away.

You were already caught in the net, you were caught in the snare, and the more you struggled, and the more you flailed, the more you got wrapped up in the net, in the snare.

God, has through his restorative act, come, and set you free.

So how desperate was your situation, when God began his restorative act on you and me? How glorious, and majestic, and beautiful is the restorative act of God towards us?

All the way, not like, well I had, I had a million in my account, and he gave me another.

He matched it. I didn't just have a million, it's not like I, it's not even that I had zero in my account, and he gave me two million.

It's that I owed a debt I could never pay, and he gave me a positive, extremely high balance in my account, that I could never,

I couldn't have paid this debt. Are you getting what I'm saying? I couldn't pay the debt, and he's given me ten million dollars in my bank account.

He's given me, it's immeasurable what God has done for us.

It's like a dream. It's like a dream come true. How could this transfer happen?

I think of like, an illustration of Joseph, who's in prison, and one morning, he's called into the presence of Pharaoh, and the next day, he is the highest in the land.

Like, that kind of transfer from, not just, not just from like, common citizen to the, to the palace, from prison, enslaved to the, the master of the prison, and doing whatever they tell you to do, and probably sweeping out nasty dungeon cells, and doing all kinds of stuff, whatever they tell you to do, and going from there to the palace.

Are you getting what I'm saying? That kind of transfer, that's what it's like to be a recipient of this.

Now, do you understand why the psalmist is saying, we're like those who dream? It's like a dream come true, this restoration of God.

What are we talking about in this restoration? We're talking about nothing less than God showing his covenant faithfulness to his people, and the psalmist is reflecting on a past event when

God broke through faithfully for his people. We don't have a very clear indication of the specific historical account that this author was thinking of when he's talking about the restoration of God towards his people, particularly in the life and history of Israel.

It's hard to tell exactly what he was talking about. Some people think it was the exile that was the context of the writing of this psalm.

So, the people have all been taken away to Babylon, and there in Babylon, they are servants and slaves living in a, in a pagan culture where there's the worship of all these idols and things like that, and then slowly over time,

God restored them to the land, brought them back in, and, and gave them a blessing.

They ended up rebuilding the temple around the time of Ezra. Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, and the prophet

Malachi, and during the very end of the prophetic books, that's the era that some people think this was written, but I think this is a common story in the history of Israel.

God's restorative act, time and time again, working for his people. I imagine that the parting of the

Red Sea would have felt like an occasion like this, like beyond all measure, beyond, it felt like a dream walking through the water.

You getting what I'm saying? I mean, it's like, we were there, and the Egyptians were over and opposed to us, and they could move in at any time and strike us, and we had our backs to the, to the sea, no place to go, and God restored us, and protected us, in all of that, in the context of a covenant relationship with his people.

I'm sure that David slaying Goliath felt like this to a large degree. The fall of the walls of Jericho would have felt like this.

Victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel would have felt like this.

To me, I think about our church history. Baptisms have felt like this.

Meeting with people who are taking major steps and growing deeper feels like this. Victory over sin feels like this.

God changing the hearts of the school administration to allow us to meet here feels like this. I don't know if you know that in our history, when we were first starting as a church, we were looking for a place to meet.

This is like six and a half years ago now, before we even had a facility in mind. We didn't know necessarily where we were gonna be going, and I sat down, and I, I was blocking out time to just kind of be in the community here, meeting at the coffee shop, getting to know people, kind of connecting, figuring out what

Matawan was all about. I was living at Portage at the time. Actually, maybe we just moved to Matawan right around then.

I set up an appointment with the super, the then -president superintendent, and I, and I blocked off an hour to sit down, and he said, yeah, sure,

I've got an hour here, and so we had blocked off some time, sat down with him. What we had blocked off for an hour took about ten minutes, maybe five to ten minutes.

I walked in, shared with him who I was, what I wanted to accomplish, said, is there any facility at the school that we could use?

He said, no, thank you very much, and I went, that was it. That was the extent of the meeting.

I mean, there was, this, this facility was completely shut down to us at that point in history. It was, there was no way that, he said,

I've, we've set a set of precedents, we've told other churches, no, they can't meet on the, in this place. Well, fast forward a couple of years, and the economy's taking a bit of a downturn.

There's a new administration, and I set up a meeting with him around the time that we were kind of pressing the limits of our previous location, set up a time.

He said, yeah, this sounds great. We said we'd be willing to pay for it, and, and here we are. So, you can see how there's just a turn of things that God has done.

Even just simply, if you could go back through my journal, and I've done this recently, to go back through my journal and see all the times that I have prayed over the last six years, that God would raise up somebody from our midst to send them to be our representatives around the world, to some foreign people who do not know the gospel, that we might have a reach out beyond the

United States of America, and God and His faithfulness has raised up Zach and Lee to answer a very specific prayer that's been on my heart since we started

Recast. I would suggest to you that anywhere, though, and I want to be careful about this, because I can highlight, we, how many of you know that sometimes in life we can highlight these really awesome things, like the parting of the

Red Sea, or these mountaintop experiences, but I would suggest to you that anywhere you see the values of the kingdom, when you think values of the kingdom, think love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, where you see those things breaking into our world, we are seeing glimpses and hints of God's restoration.

The seeds of the restoration that God is working is not limited to the really big stuff that our minds often turn to, but the restoration of our fortune is often found in a gentle answer towards an angry spouse.

I mean, it wouldn't be natural to us, but something where you see the Spirit of God working in your life to give victory over your, your own anger, or your own quick wit, or your own snappy response.

The seeds of restoration are found in the patience to smile and coo at an infant while changing the third dirty diaper in a half an hour.

The peace that settles over our hearts when we get a bad diagnosis, or the love that compels a daughter to forgive her mother after years of animosity.

These are the places where the restoration breaks into our everyday lives, and I consider myself a privilege to have a front -row seat for these past six years, watching

God break in with His restoration. In ordinary, everyday, routine, glorious, and beautiful ways.

Here in our midst, here in our community, here in our fellowship, where God is breaking in and demonstrating

His power to rule and reign in the lives of His people. But verse 2 gets back to that, what

I talked about. There's a visible aspect to this, and you might be wondering, what is it, what does he mean there's a visible aspect? I already said it wasn't, you know, it's, it's not, when he was restoring our fortunes, when he's restoring us to the restoration, again, it's not your bank account, it isn't the size of your house, it isn't the ripness of your abs, you know, what does it look like when

God's restoring a guy, you know, it's like big biceps, and he's ripped, or what, what, how do you know, what can you see when somebody is undergoing the restoration of God, and here it is, look at verse 2.

Our mouths, you're gonna be able to hear it, you're gonna be able to see it with your eyes, you're gonna be able to hear it with your ears, our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy, shouts of joy.

Notice the corporate nature of this verse, the people of God are gathered together, they're talking about their mouths corporately, our mouth was filled with laughter.

The people of God gather together to recognize that God is restoring them. It's one of the reasons we're in this room today, is a recognition of God's restorative act in our lives.

It's a great thing, an awesome thing to gather with God's people, and reflect on the great things that he has done for us.

And I love how the Hebrew language, in no uncertain terms, begins to get a little undignified in this process.

Rather than a formalized, somber, testimony time of declaring in respectful terms what the

Lord has done for his people, there is laughter. There's laughter and shouts of joy.

The phrase, in Hebrew, mouth filled with laughter, is an extreme statement in Hebrew. It's not a demure, polite chuckle that some might find appropriate for a church gathering, ha ha ha.

This is a, throw your head back, your coffee comes out your nose, snot bubble, snorting, kind of can't gain my breath, kind of laughter that's being used in Hebrew here.

This is an obnoxious kind of laugh that grabs everybody's attention. You know the kind of laugh that I'm talking about because you have one of them.

There's that laugh when you, when, there's that laugh when you're trying to control it in a public setting, and then there's that laugh when you can't control it any longer, and each one of us, whether it's the high pitch, or the, you know, whatever it is that you can't control once it starts to lose control, you know what

I'm talking about. Each one of us has one of those, and that's this laugh that it's talking about. In the gathering of God's people, a laugh of He has saved us.

He's redeemed us. There's no shame in it. It's just shouts of joy and praise that, can you believe that He has made this transfer for you and me?

Can you believe this? Like, like I found the pearl of great price. I found the treasure, and I can't help but just rejoice and be thankful.

He loves us. He died for us, that we might live for eternity with Him.

Thank you. Amen. He loves us.

And all of the stuff of life that gets in the way that clouds us, or our own dignity, or our own, you know,

I've got to have an appearance. I would say that that's one of the biggest things with stage fright for me when

I first, man, I might lose control like I just did. I mean, seriously, that was, in high school, in college, it was always just a fear of people, a fear of what, man,

I might look like a fool. Man, I want to look like a fool if it's for Jesus. I don't care if a snot bubble comes out of my nose in the praise of God.

I don't care if I snort a little once in a while. It's for the cause of rejoicing in my

Savior, and what He has done. That sugar, that cake,

I'm not, I'm not gonna eat that piece of cake right there, just turn that, turn that aside for a second.

You know, laughter, laughter is a powerful thing in our culture and in our lives.

And we know that we can unfortunately be moved to laughter by all kinds of things, right? There's some very inappropriate humor that I find funny.

I'm gonna be honest. There are times where you could make me laugh by saying something that I wish didn't make me laugh. Do you know what

I'm talking about? Have any of you been there? But man, there is a righteous, awesome, glorious cause for real laughter.

Just, just that, that turn. Sometimes good humor is like the turn, the change, the thing that you weren't expecting to come, and that's, that's what redemption is for us.

We don't deserve it, and all of a sudden, boom, there it is, the restoration and the treasure,

Jesus Christ. Many consider God to be a killjoy. Yet this verse testifies to, to an appropriate human response to the restoration of God.

Laughter and shouts of joy. How many of you, go ahead and raise your hand if you're a shout at the

TV kind of person while you watch sports. Okay, a few of us are, and then some of you are like, I don't know if I'm, am

I, am I gonna get singled out for this or whatever? I kind of am. I'm up on my feet, you know, when somebody goes yard, or when my team scores a touchdown.

I'm, I've actually got a bruise on my knuckle right here from scraping the ceiling after a University of Michigan touchdown a few years ago that I thought mattered at the time.

I, I don't know. So I'm a little bit more like kind of one of those people that's a little bit more emphatic and, and jump up and down.

And, and when you, have you, have you ever been to the park? Have you ever been like at Comerica when somebody hits a home run or something?

You're high -fiving people you don't even know. You know what I mean? Everybody around you is just celebrating, jumping, you know.

It's awesome, and it's exciting when that kind of thing happens. And that's the kind of picture that we have with these shouts of joy.

The text is talking about, again, an undignified celebration of just, amen, hallelujah, praise

God. This is awesome. One of the most confusing things to me is the way that the church,

I'm saying in general, not necessarily specifically our gathering, but it definitely affects our gathering, and, and that's that the church in general has inherited a tradition of somber quietness in worship.

And we ought to ask ourselves, what is it that we're celebrating here this morning? Quite a bit more than a touchdown?

Quite a bit more than a, than a playoff goal? Quite a bit more than that, right?

God. We're celebrating God breaking into our everyday, in the process of restoring us.

God exchanging eternal torment for Him, in exchange for eternal joy for us.

God reforming us more and more into the image of His Son. God faithfully keeping

His promises to each one of us. God doing great things.

And notice the response of the people that are observing this. They can see it. They're watching. And the nations observed

Israel in celebration, and they heard the shouts of joy, and they heard the laughter. And they heard all of that delight, and they declare that the

Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for them. People out in the world are watching the people of God.

Did you know that? They're watching. And I believe that one of the best testimonies we have to offer the world around us is our celebration.

Is our joy, our rejoicing, our delight in God, our laughter, our gladness.

I fear that many watch us and think, man, whatever they've got, I want to make sure that I don't take any of that.

You know, it apparently makes you take yourself way too seriously. It causes you to withdraw from everybody around you, and it must taste horrible, because man, look at their faces.

It must just, ooh, it must, I mean, it must be really sour to take whatever they're drinking, eating, or whatever.

Instead, in this text, the nations come to the people of God in this psalm, and want some of whatever they're, whatever they're taking.

And we can say, it's called Restoration, and His name is Jesus Christ. And He is delightful.

He is sweet. And He gives a swing to my step, and an abiding joy that isn't just hidden deep type of joy, but a joy that affects my face.

A joy that erupts in laughter. A joy that erupts in shouts of joy. One of the commentaries that I read for this study this week, was talking about, it's by a guy named

Josh Moody. It's an excellent book. It's, it's less of a commentary, and more of just a flowing book on the

Psalms of Ascent. It's an excellent resource. But he was talking about this concept of deep joy. And he was kind of being a bit sarcastic in his wit, but he, and I kind of appreciated it.

But he was just talking about how there is this, there's this sense in Christian circles, in particular among evangelicals, where we talk about this deep joy.

And he kind of mocked the point about how deep this joy often is. Sometimes the joy is so deep that your face doesn't even know it's there.

Right? Sometimes the, the joy is just, man, it's a deep joy. It's so, a body is so deep that, ugh.

And I'm joyful. Right? You know that kind of deep joy that I'm talking about?

Sometimes it's called anger. Sometimes it's called frustration. Sometimes it's called animosity.

There's all kinds of words for it, but it's a deep joy. And what, what the Psalm is saying is, let it, let it be deep, and let it be shallow.

And let it be everywhere in between. Let God redeem your face. Let him restore us from our heads to our toes and everything in between.

Let's let our face know that we've been restored. Let's let our face know that we've been redeemed.

Let's let our vocal cords and shouts of joy know that we've been restored.

And our laughter. We are destined for glory because of the work of Jesus Christ.

No more this business of a deep joy that nobody can see. That's not joy.

That's not what this Psalm is talking about. Recast. Let's, I think this is glorious and beautiful.

I think of it like verse 3 was, was God's plan for us this morning. I mean, I, it doesn't even require interpretation.

We can read it and we can apply it to what we're celebrating here as our sixth birthday. The Lord has done great things for us.

We are glad. The Lord has done great things for us. We are glad.

Do you believe it? Do you believe that he's done great things for us? He has indeed blessed us deeply.

And so are you letting your gladness show. Laughter, shouts of joy, gladness should be the way that we roll.

But we know that our restoration is not yet complete. And so I think that immediately we might want to turn to another side of the equation or something.

I want to point out that the Psalm mentions the other side of the equation without turning the page on joy. The, this is not going to turn the page on joy and go, yeah, but don't forget that there's dry times in the desert.

No, it's gonna, it's gonna even talk about joy in the midst of those things and even calling for it and constantly calling to God for that restoration that we know is yet to come.

I want to make sure that you understand though. And be very careful in thinking that the only acceptable response of the believer is a plastic smile and pretending type of gladness.

The fact of the matter is we know that there's difficult times, right? We know that. Even for God's people, we know that there are times in the desert as verse, let's see, verse 4 talks about, restore our fortunes,

O Lord, like streams in the Negev. We know that there are times like that, that are difficult, even for God's people.

And in those times the psalmist reminds us to pray that God would again restore

His people, would again restore us. We long for a time when that restoration is finally complete, that it's no longer cyclical, that it's no longer looking at just kind of taste of the restoration, but that it's completed and all done.

But for now, we must allow the glimpses and hints of a final restoration to sustain us. But it isn't just in those small tastes.

I praise God that it's not just in the backwards glance because sometimes those aren't as sustaining in the present.

Have you noticed what I'm talking about? Like you can look back on good times. Can you look back at times of laughter?

When you're in the middle of hard times, those aren't necessarily super helpful. Now you can look back at them and you can look and say, okay, well

God has, God has indeed restored me. He's indeed given me good times, but it's not just that, that the psalmist writes about.

But he also talks about the future. Says you both have a past as one who is being restored by God.

You have a past that you can look back to. But you have these promises of God. You have these future things that he has guaranteed that are the ultimate sustaining thing in the life of a believer.

Look at verses 5 and 6. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.

For those who belong to God, you can take that to the bank. You may have some nights spent in tears.

You may have lonely stretches where it feels like nobody understands or even listens to you. Maybe you feel as though nobody really cares.

But the psalmist likens these times to the dry and dusty area in the south of Israel called the

Negev. Ironically in the Hebrew language, that geographical location, the Negev, Negev actually just means dusty.

Like it was, that's a pretty descriptive word for this area in the stretch of desert down to the south area between there and the

Sinai Peninsula. Just this really inhospitable land that is down throughout that area. But we pray asking for God to bring rain to the parched places in our lives.

Just like in verse 4, restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the

Negev. And in verses 5 and 6, the songwriter declares that the one who goes out weeping into the fields to sow, to sow seeds, will come home at harvest time with shouts of joy, bringing in his sheaves with him.

Sheaves, by the way, are the stalks with the grain still on them all bundled up at harvest time.

And harvest time is often a metaphor, by the way, in Hebrew poetry for the end of the world. And I believe that the songwriter has this long -term perspective in mind about where his hope comes from.

Another psalm put it, put it this way, weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.

Weeping may last, but it's got its limits, because joy is breaking in for those who are being restored.

And joy that often comes about as a direct result of the difficulties that we face in life.

We know that there is a day, a day on the horizon where we will indeed meet our maker.

We know there's a day where this body will cease to work and function anymore. And in the midst of what we perceive in our minds from a humanistic standpoint is the worst thing that could happen to us is the entrance to the final restoration for those who are his.

Even that most, most imminent, most dark shadow that overshadows all of our lives, death itself has no victory over this kind of hope, has no victory over and against this type of joy that says

God loves me and has redeemed me in his son Jesus Christ, that he has given me tastes of it in the past, he's giving us all tastes of it in the present, but man in the future, that is where it's going to be completed.

Harvest time is that metaphor for that time when everything is going to be restored and made right.

And we have every cause to rejoice. If anyone on the planet has cause for celebrating, has cause for laughter, has cause for shouts of joy and gladness, it's us.

This isn't saying that Christians throw the best parties, but we certainly have a corner on the market of the deepest, most real, and most authentic causes for celebration.

Are you getting what I'm saying? We have the ultimate reason for celebration. People can celebrate the Super Bowl, they can celebrate all kinds of things, but man, how many of you know that that's a chintzy celebration in light of an eternity with God and restoration, where my destiny was for eternal torment and hell, and now is on the new earth with him to reign forever and ever?

Glorious transformation where we are heirs with Jesus Christ. In light of that, maybe we should throw the best parties.

Right? Maybe we should. Consider that. But even during those times that are appropriate for weeping, there are times, don't hear me say, okay, you've just got to put on this plastic grin in all circumstances, in all areas, remembering that Jesus himself wept.

We never under any circumstances weep as the hopeless ones. Because we always have the promise, always have the promise, always have the promise that this too shall pass, whatever this is, even if this is death, it shall pass.

That is the truth over the life of anybody who is undergoing the the restoration of God through his son

Jesus Christ. This too shall pass. Whatever this is. I've heard

Mark Driscoll say this, and I love it, and I'm gonna just steal it from him. Mark Driscoll would always say that the earth is the closest to hell that the

Christian will ever experience. This life is the closest to hell that you will ever experience. But the scary thing is the converse of that.

That this life is the closest to heaven that those who are not going through the restoration of God will experience.

And that should motivate us. Because what we experience as the darkest things that our existence will ever experience are the lightest things that others will ever experience.

And man that ought to fuel our passion for this restoration in our community, for bringing this.

And by the way, I would, I would be fine just exchanging the word restoration for gospel. God's process of redeeming us through his son

Jesus Christ died on the cross, buried, raised again three days later for us, and that's the process for us.

That's what he's doing. Whether we find ourselves in a season of great gladness this morning, or a season of great difficulty, our hope is the same.

We can look back at the glimpses of restoration that God has granted us. We look forward to the promises of the future restoration, and we should experience joy.

And not just a deep -down hidden kind of joy, but a joy that can make a cancer patient laugh.

A gladness that wars against the headlines of a fallen world. Shouts of joy that come from a reminder that a complete restoration is underway for God's people.

God has given us great glimpses of his restoration. Recast on our sixth birthday, let's remember that the

Lord has done great things for us, and let's be glad together. As you leave this place, let me highlight three particular applications that stuck out to me in the text, and we'll wrap things up.

The first, first application that I think all of us could probably take on to some degree, is laugh more and celebrate more.

Not going to come to church and hear that as the application very often, but celebrate. Laugh.

Shouts of joy. I want to confess that I've only watched myself preach a couple of times.

I've only videoed this thing a couple of times, and I'm shocked sometimes at how serious my face can look when

I'm up here. I could be probably talking, probably during this message, I've been talking about joy like this, right? Everybody be more joyful.

And I mean part of that is my, my awkwardness and backwardsness, and my, my stage presence, and then coming at things from an academic perspective, and things like that, and I get caught up in all of that, and so that's my, that's my bad.

But please don't think that the way that I look up here is the standard for our faces throughout the week. It's certainly not my standard, and I, and I want to improve on that, but, but joy, celebration, laughter, a contagious gladness that causes others around us to say, wow, the

Lord has done great things for them. They're hearing it. They're hearing us talk about it.

They're hearing us address how blessed we have been in Christ, and they're rejoicing.

And well, not only are they rejoicing, but they're moved. They're moved to say, God gets the credit for this.

Second, tied in with that is don't forget that others are watching you. This doesn't imply that you need to have a plastic or artificial grin in the tough times, but just be mindful that you may be overlooking opportunities to share the good news, because you are reserved in your joy and delight.

You're, you're pulling back on that, and God wants you to go for it. I want you to sometimes be, in a sense, what our world would say is undignified for the cause of Christ.

I would always recommend, by the way, one of our core values here as a church is authenticity. I would, I would recommend that you err on the side of authenticity.

If you're down, and you want to put on a plastic grin, man, the minute that they poke you and ask you about it, you're gonna snap at them, right?

Because that's what's in your heart. So if your heart is angry, and you're like putting on a smile, it's just gonna be a matter of before lunchtime.

Somebody's gonna push your buttons, and you're gonna go off on them, and it's gonna be like, what was that smile about earlier? I don't get that. But think about it in these terms.

If you find yourself always being authentic, and being authentic for you means critical, serious, dour, stern.

If that's what you find as reality in your life, and you're being authentic all the time, and it's always stern, it's always dour, and can't take a joke, and can't laugh, then maybe we need to review the good news.

Get it? Maybe we need to rethink what is in the core of our hearts.

If we are always dour, stern, judgmental, always looking down our noses at others, always judging others, always trying to improve on our, promote ourselves, we ought to review, maybe step one, review what

God has done for you, and consider what promises He offers to you in Jesus Christ.

That's the place of starting to have that internal bent towards criticism, or towards those things.

Change and transform. It always comes back to the cross. It's not a self -improvement program. I'm not gonna give you five ways to make yourself happier.

Ten, rungs up the ladder to joy. There's one way to obtain joy on this fallen planet, and it is

Jesus Christ and Him alone, His sacrifice for you at the cross. That's the only place. If you are lacking joy here this morning, go back to plan

A. And if tomorrow you are lacking joy, go back to the cross.

And if a week from now you are lacking joy, go back to the cross, and recognize all that has been lavished upon you in Jesus Christ.

Now some of you might need to sit down and meet with me and say, I haven't had joy in a long time, and there's there's a real genuine medical issue called clinical depression.

And that's a real thing in some people's lives. Some of you here in the room are maybe even feeling guilty by my message because you're going,

I just don't have it. I mean come and talk with me and maybe we can get a meeting with a counselor or somebody who we could we could help walk through that.

Because if you do not ever have joy in your life, it could actually simply be a medical issue that you're undergoing and that you you can work through.

So don't let this, as a matter of fact, if you feel guilty right now, if you're feeling like, man I just don't have enough joy,

I'd love to sit down and talk with you. I'd love to have that meeting and just just walk through this. I'm not gonna beat you up, you know.

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna hit you over the head with scripture that tells you that you've got to just be joyful all the time. We can walk through this and work through this.

Lastly, lastly, let's live our lives with a mind towards the greatest thing that God has done.

While we're celebrating the great things that God has done for us, let's not miss the biggest one. So we can talk about the way that he's grown our church, the baptisms, all of these really cool things.

But man, the greatest thing, the most glorious thing, is the cross of Jesus Christ. The people of God, in verse 3, state in general terms,

God has done great things that have brought us gladness. But we know that the greatest thing he has done for us is the complete offer of forgiveness and restoration through his son

Jesus Christ. God loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins.

I, for one, don't ever want to get over that. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons we take communion each week is to remember that Jesus Christ died on the cross for us.

And I want to confess that I have a strong desire to change the church's tradition on communion.

Not, not, not necessarily, I mean in some part our churches, but it's not, it's not easy to change, right? I mean, it's tradition easy to change?

Not at all. But I would love for communion to be more joy, more celebration, more gladness, even shouts of praise and laughter when we take the bread and the juice.

Now to some of you that sounds terribly disrespectful, even as I said it. The idea of it being celebratory and rejoicing, and aren't we talking about a guy who died?

Yeah, and he died out of love, and he rose again three days later, and he is alive. It's not a funeral, it's a celebration of his victory over sin and death, our greatest enemies.

And I cannot think of anything more appropriate than surprised wonder and delight in the remembrance at the table that he shed his blood for somebody as messed up and jacked up as me.

What? What, you loved me this much? Are you serious? Should we ever be able to get beyond that?

Should we ever get past that? Is there a maturity that runs deeper than that? Absolutely not.

You cannot get deeper than the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you on the cross. That should be everything from what we are rocking our kids in the nursery about, the gospel.

He loves you, not because you're awesome, and you're a snowflake, and you're a butterfly, but because you're a sinner, and he wants to redeem you.

That's our hope. All the way till they lay me in the grave,

I hope I'm never beyond the wonder and awe of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for me at the cross.

It's, it's everything. It's everything from beginning to end. It ought to be the center point of our fellowship in our small groups.

It ought to be the center point of our discussions and our common bonds throughout the church, and our service to the community, and in our workplace, and in our neighborhoods.

Recognition, it's all about him and what he's done. So, I can't ask you.

I can't ask you to do a fist pump when you come to the table and take communion. I could ask you, but I'm not going to ask you because then it's awkward.

Like this, if I, if I ask you to do these things, then, then it, then it's awkward because then you just do them because I told you to, right?

Like the fist pump, or laugh and shout praises during communion would, I would love that.

I would love that if that was reality, and if your heart is there. But it would be awkward, obviously, if you just do it because I told you to, but man, if your heart wells up, it's kind of like in worship, like the praise, like raise your hand if you can.

Like if, if you're, if you're so held back, that's okay. That's okay, and I get that, and I was raised in that tradition. But man, if you can, and you can be exuberant, then let your, let your body know that you're worshiping

God. That's kind of the point. That's what I'm trying to say. But let me ask that, particularly this morning, and maybe let this even be a change for the way that you consider and contemplate communion.

Let me ask that you come to the table this morning with an attitude of celebration and thankfulness.

Pull, try to extricate the funeral aspect of this memorial that we've been, many of us have been raised with, and contemplate and consider celebration and thankfulness.

Come with delight in your heart for what Jesus Christ has done for you, with gladness, and feel free to let out a hallelujah.

Feel free to say, thank you. Yes. Whatever it might be for you.

I'm guessing that for most of us, it would be just like normal, and that's okay. That's okay. I recognize there's all different kinds of personalities, but I want to point this out, is one of the, while I was interacting with people about my sermon, somebody said, you know, my personality is this way, and I get that, and I recognize that there's all different kinds of people in the room.

Some of you are like really quiet, and really, but I just want to point out that there's some way that God has given you, and your personality, and your makeup, to let others know around you that you are delighted and joyful about your salvation in Christ.

However He's put you together. Doesn't have to be rambunctious. It's not like God, but God can redeem you in your personality, and the way that He's designed you.

But exuberance, and joy, and a little bit of lack of dignity, because some of us hide behind our personality to ultimately try to remain more dignified.

Like, it is a game. There is a game involved in it, right? I won't, I would never shout for joy. Why? Because I look like, well, no, because of the personality that I have, right?

Because I'm a little bit more quiet and reserved. That's why. You know what I'm saying. If you're here, and you don't believe that Jesus is the rightful ruler of your life, you haven't, you haven't asked

Him to be your King, your Master, your Lord, and you've never asked Him to save you, then I'd ask that you please skip communion.

Just remain in your seat, and take in the song that, that Josh is gonna play for us.

Communion is for those who are celebrating the forgiveness we have received through faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

It would just make no sense for you to come to the table if you don't believe that He, if you can't celebrate something that He's done for you, if you don't believe that He did it for you.

But recast, the Lord has done great things for us. Let's be glad together.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much. Thank you so much.

For the unmerited favor that you have, you've lavished on your people. And I thank you for the, the many,

I can't, I can't even express in words the, the gratitude that I have for the past six years, and the things that you have done here, the glimpses of your restoration that we've seen, you breaking into people's lives, you breaking into our community, you breaking into, to our own hearts, and, and singling out areas, and, and providing water in the desert, and in those, those dark places, and those hard places.

Father, I thank you for the deep and abiding joy that affects our faces. Father, I pray for more of that. I pray for a sense of letting our hearts, or letting our faces know what's in our hearts.

And, Father, where maybe we have not fully understood the gospel, and we haven't let it impact us. Father, I pray that it would transform our

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and on out into the remainder of this month, and the remainder of the year, that we remember that whatever difficulties we face, these things shall pass, but the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ will remain forever for your children.