God's Pattern of Restoration — Art Katz

Psalm 126 and the Habit of Regular Scripture Reading

If you'll turn to Psalm 126, which is today's psalm for me and my regular reading, which I hope is an encouragement for others to have a regular psalm in their daily reading, just to show you what the Lord will quicken in that day, because you've made it a habit to look into the scriptures with regularity.

So, 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 it was said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them.

The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the water courses in the Negev. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall doubtless come home or return with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves with them.

Zion, Israel, the Church, and the Eschatological Restoration

So, it's a remarkable, triumphal statement. This is an eschatological psalm. I can't think of anything in the history of Israel of which this could be a fulfillment. The nations have never seen anything from Israel in some blessing that has come to Zion that would affect them as profoundly as is indicated in this psalm.

So, it shows the future pattern that concludes the age, when the Lord restores the fortunes of Zion. So, the word Zion is a precious, all-inclusive catchword. It refers, of course, to literal Israel, but Zion is also inclusive of the church.

This psalm could have a double meaning, restoring the fortune of Israel, restoring the fortunes of the church. To those who mourn or who have wept, sown seeds with tears, that they will see God delivering the church as they will see God delivering Israel.

When the Lord restores, it's the Lord's work and it's the Lord's time. When the set time to favor Zion is come, the Lord will restore. And when it comes, it comes with such a suddenness of surprise. Maybe it will come at a time when we least expect it, probably when we're most discouraged, when there are least appearances that such a thing could take place, is the very time that the Lord comes through.

And that it describes those that were so overwhelmed by the suddenness and the magnitude of that deliverance, that their mouths were filled with laughter. I don't know if that's ever happened to you. I don't know if it's ever happened to me.

You're so overcome with something that you giggle or you laugh. It's not because something is funny. It's because the magnitude of what has taken place is of such a kind that it evokes an expression of joy that even is beyond words.

Sowing in Tears Before Reaping Joy

But I think that that will be in proportion to those who have sown with tears. Tears may be a sign of a seeming discouragement that their labors were vain. They didn't see any notable result for the investment of their life or their sacrifice.

And so there's a kind of a tandem thing. Grief and joy. Tears and sorrow and joy unspeakable. If we are guarding ourselves, I've said this so many times, as most Christians do, because we don't have any stomach for grief or for suffering, we'll neither be candidates for the joy.

We'll not be laughing. It will be for those as a particular reward who are willing to bear the grit of the suffering that the Lord himself bears in having to wait and having first to proceed the deliverance, the restoration, the coming again with the trials that preceded.

In fact, the trials are at the very last statement before the deliverance comes. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy when the Lord will turn again or restore the fortunes of Zion.

So the same Lord who has established the captivity is the same Lord who brings the turning again of the captivity. That's his prerogative. It's our sin that has caused the judgment, but it's his grace and mercy that brings the restoration and the turning again.

Because as we read the other day, it's the Lord who breaks the bars of brass and cuts the bars of iron. That's typical biblical and psalmist phraseology, words that are taken to show how difficult it is for any man to break through.

This is not something that man can achieve, man can obtain. It's only a God, the same God who will affect the judgment, same God affects the restoration because it takes his power to break the bars of iron and the bars of brass asunder, but he will.

God will when it's his time, when his time has come and the purposes for the captivity, the trial have been fulfilled. So it's an encouragement to know that the Lord has given us this advance notice that the day will come when we will shout with joy and our mouths will be filled with laughter.

Those who tasted and knew of the captivity that could not be alleviated and who suffered while exile and banishment themselves. So it's really interesting that we have something like this in our own history of Ben Israel.

There was a banishment, there was an exile, there was a casting out. In a very minor way, a kind of a hint and suggestion of what Israel as a nation is going to experience in a greater proportion. And I remember standing by the barn, looking at my pale yellow house, painted to alleviate the drab dullness of that time of affliction when all of Ben Israel had been scattered and the house was empty.

I was the only resident. I think it was even before the Herreras came. And I stood by the barn with the first call to preach after 14 months of silence, a required sabbatical. And I had my briefcase in one hand, my suitcase in the other.

I was about to leave the property. The sun was coming down at about five or 6 p .m. in that eerie, mellow glow that comes with the twilight hour and it bathed that yellow house in such an eerie appearance.

And I'm looking at it at the barn and this verse came to my heart. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing shall come home or return doubtless with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves with them.

That verse, I wept when I sowed how desolate everything looked, how seemingly hopeless. I was tasting banishment and exile. But I was leaving with seeds and I broke and I wept. And so I think we're seeing now something of the sheaves that are being brought back because the seed was sown with tears by those who go out.

Exile, Isolation, and the Church's Captivity

Those who are willing to suffer banishment, those who are willing to taste exile, not only literally and physically as we ourselves were required to do, but there's a certain kind of banishment and exile even while we're in the church.

We're banished from the company of others who find disfavor or disagreement with us. Or we're not one of the boys, we're in a way required to experience a certain kind of isolation from mainstream things where people seem to be enjoying.

There's a certain kind of deprivation of denial that is the experience of those who will doubtless return with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves with them. So it's a kind of captivity that the church itself is in right now and those who seek to alleviate that captivity by seemingly, by seeming apostolic and prophetic means that are questionable actually deepen the captivity rather than alleviate it.

They make us feel more painful about the church's condition because they're not willing to wait for the set time when God himself will deliver Zion. So then it was said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them.

Israel's Restoration as a Witness to the Nations

I suspect it's going to be the same nations that have taken Israel captive in which the captives have remained and have seen God himself bring them out of that captivity and restore their Zion. So it's a testimony to the nations of an ultimate kind.

It is so ultimate that it will constitute their salvation. And I don't think that anything short of a deliverance affected by God sovereignly and out of his power, out of a hopeless condition of banishment, exile, and captivity would have so impressed the nations as is described here, that the Lord hath done great things for them.

Can the Lord have done great things for them and not then equally do great things for the nations? And in fact, the great thing that will be done for the nations, having seen the great things that God has done for Zion, is the nation's salvation and the redemption to that same God.

It's a very great thing. It is so great a thing that the Jews who have suffered both captivity and exile, seeing what their restoration has wrought in the nations by their return, may even say it was worthwhile.

For in this, our destiny and Paul, as a witness to the nations, has been affected. Their salvation has been wrought by the seeing of the deliverance that has come to Zion in the set time of God, independent of anything that man could have done.

And it's so irrefutable a testimony, it is so beyond any place of argumentation or dispute of Islam versus Christianity, that the nations have no alternative but to seeing what great things that God has done, than to take those great things for themselves.

And it's a very great thing. It's a salvation to the uttermost. With great things that the Lord has done, great things for us and we rejoiced. So you don't know who's speaking in verse three. Is it Israel rejoicing or the nations?

And likely both. I want to read my notes that I penciled in here, some of them are really juicy. And my inspiration from Spurgeon's comments out of the Treasury of David, in which he says, they plainly saw and they rightly ascribed.

Isn't that a wonderful turn of a phrase? They plainly saw what was the key of Israel's deliverance and they rightly ascribed it to God. And therefore ascribing it to God makes the implication for themselves clear.

That this is the only God who is God and the God who has demonstrated both his judgment and his mercy and his power and therefore calls us to that same salvation. And I write, how can that ascription take place without an appropriate submission?

Is the word ascription too fancy for some of us? To ascribe is to make an acknowledgment of something. So I'm saying, can you ascribe without subscribing? It's because they ascribed it to God, they must then submit to God unto salvation.

It's not an acknowledgment that is without consequence unto salvation. Maybe that's not the least reason that their mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues shout with joy. Because part of the harvest is the nations themselves.

The seed that was sown with tears are sheaves of a global and of a cosmic kind. But they have to be sown in tears. If they're not sown in tears, they're not rightly sown. And someone has suggested that even the tears themselves might be the seed.

Travail, Holy Seed, and the Hard Soil of Mission

So tears not only for our own affliction, the consequence of our own sin, tears for the sense of frustration, and seeming lack of result for the investment of our labors, tears for having been Israel to be totally emptied out.

Whatever it is, there's a reason for tears if we are susceptible and open for the dealings of God to bear those things. But unless there's a travail of tears, there's no birth. There's got to be a sorrow.

There's got to be a sowing. If it's a dry-eyed mechanical proclamation of the gospel because I guess I got to, or it says so, was be saved by following step one, step two, step three, there's no result of this kind.

These are not eternal sheaves. These sheaves come because the seed that has been sown has been sown in tears. And because it's a labor of breaking into hard soil and difficult conditions, cold, unreceptive hearts, something like the Jews of New York City, to break into that and to sow among them will not be a true sowing unless it's a sowing in tears.

And not the least of the tears is the sense of the eternal fate and destiny of those who will not hear you, who will not receive you, and who will reject the mercy of God that is being expressed, knowing that for them the inevitable thing is captivity.

Great last days trials and great afflictions that might have been saved had they been willing to hear your word now. I think not the least reason for the joy of Israel and those who have waited for God's restoration of Zion is that the same people who have said to Israel when it was in captivity and suffering the judgment of God, where is your God, now have to acknowledge that your God is here and he has done this great thing.

And it says, restore our fortunes, O Lord, in verse four, like the water courses in the Negev. In the south, in the dry land, in the arid desert. Let the waters again break forth in the arid place is an encouragement for those who are dry or weary or feel wasted.

And that the commentators don't understand the inclusion of this verse. How can Israel say again after their captivity has been turned, restore again? Restore our fortunes as it was before. So there's something, I don't know how to reconcile that for Israel's future or maybe it's not Israel here but ourselves.

Not only to let the waters flow in the dry place because we have experienced them before but let the waters dry in the dry place because Israel will experience that release from captivity. So understanding what God will do for Israel is a reason for us to beckon that same God to let those waters flow for us now in the places that are dry.

So those who go out weeping require a going out. And it's a going out from the comfort zone. It's a going out that makes you a candidate for tears and hard labor in intractable and difficult soil. Before you can sow that seed that ground needs to be broken and it's covered with fawns.

It's hardened over centuries of objection to the gospel and the elaboration of complex ways in which Jews have been able to keep the gospel at arm's length. So there's no result of God unless there's those first willing to go out and to break up that ground and will reap because they have been sowing seeds with tears, holy seed.

Not little canned messages of are you saved brother but holy seed of the word that God perfects and shapes in those who are willing for the process that perhaps they've never heard before and that seed will flourish when the time comes for Zion's captivity to be turned.

These are not little canned sermons or little evangelistic formulas and cliches and slogans. This is seed, holy seed that God will not give unless there are those willing to go out and break up the clod and the difficult conditions of the earth to sow them.

So there's a plea here that if we're going to carry sheaves with eternal joy, we need first to be willing for the going out and for the hard labor under intractable and difficult conditions and I don't know that we will have the seed first before we go.

What I had in my little attache case that day standing by the barn looking at a pale yellow house was only the beginning of something but the seed has successively been given with the going out and with the sowing with tears.

And the word that you shall doubtless return home with shouts of joy and carrying sheaves with you is God's encouragement. You will need that because it will not appear that we're going to see results and that's already been spoken in our two visitations we had last week about the call to New York.

Don't think that you're going to see result. Don't think that you're going to be gratified by people receiving you with welcoming arms or that you're going to see some effect and consequence. What you'll see is hard and dry ground and stubborn faces and resistant spirits but the encouragement for us to go out in tears and sow is God says, that he says doubtless you shall return.

No doubt about it. You may not see it now, you may not expect it. That's why you'll laugh when it comes because you don't expect it and because it'll come suddenly when every appearance is that you're not going to see it.

This is a psalm of a remarkable kind that could only have been given by the spirit. We need it as a great encouragement for the threshold at which we stand now and the difficulty that will be before us that is whatever difficulties we may have known in times past will be eclipsed by this most formidable and ultimate mission field.

Corporate Mission and Perseverance in Evangelism

We can know that. There's no ground harder. What do they say? New York City is the graveyard of evangelists and that even the success that David Wilkerson has had, however impressive, has been among the down and outers, the druggies and the alcoholic and the deviates and so on but the mainstream is yet obdurate and unmoved and hard and resistant.

That's going to take a particular kind of sowing to those who will go out for it and unless we see that though it's art going, it's our going out corporately, we're all in this, we'll not see a harvest.

This is not a single individual's labor. It has got to be the activity of a body. It's like Peter rising with the 11 on the day of Pentecost. Of necessity, only one man could speak or there would have been confusion but he rose with the 11.

He rose with the agreement of those that were joined with him in the unity of the faith or that sermon that he spoke would not have brought thousands into the kingdom and except we go out, out of that unity, rising with the 11, though one man is going, one man is speaking per se, the mouthpiece, there's got to be that agreement with a body who's willing to sow in tears, tears even of prayer.

If we're dry-eyed about this and mechanical, I guess we have an obligation to support art, it's not gonna work. There's got to be a real travail of soul and a sense of the proportions of what's at stake here in this struggle and a crying out to God for that penetration so that will brace us for the distress that's to come and the captivity of Israel and our own frustration and sense of lack of fruit because the psalm encourages us with the word doubtless.

You shall doubtless return, bearing sheaves and you can believe that the fruit of those sheaves are eternal, they're not momentary, they will not dissipate away as Billy Graham has even acknowledged that 80 or 90 of those who make decisions at his campaigns never go on with the Lord, they're never heard of again but this fruit will be eternal because the seed that is sown is holy and it's sown with tears.

Those two things are required. The one without the other is an impossibility. There'll not be seed without tears and there'll not be sowing without tears and somehow it's a tandem thing. If we're dry-eyed mechanical as I've said before, it's not going to be seed of the, it'll be seed of the kind that you buy in the hardware store, it'll be a little packet but holy seed that brings an eternal fruit and sheaves of abundance that bring shouts of joy and laughter, that must be given from God and is not packaged.

He waits to see the going out and the sowing with tears. So not a dry-eyed mechanical duty, Spurgeon says winners are weepers, no birth without travail, deep calling unto deep. Tears and seed, the two requisites, the one is contingent upon the other, a precious seed, not your commonplace pack.

Grief precedes joy, not willing for the one, forfeits the other. We're a bunch of softies, generally speaking as the church and we're not willing for the extremity of grief in order to experience the unspeakableness of joy.

Restoration for Israel and the Church

So what I see in this is not only God's provision for Zion, Israel, but God's provision for Zion, the church. This is an invitation to come out of bland and predictable conditions that are conventional and do not require much and keep us from the pain or the grief of tears, but it also forfeits any prospect of the joy that comes or the sheaves that ought to be carried.

So here's a double measure, one for Israel's deliverance and the other for the church. For the church is not delivered if it is still in its superficiality. The church is not saved to the uttermost if it's still fearful for itself and wanting to maintain its comfort zone and is unwilling for the risk of coming out.

There's no deliverance for the Zion of Israel except as first a Zion of the church that is willing for grief, that is willing for tears, that is willing for the deep calling unto deep or else they cannot be the sowers of the seed that bring about the abundant harvest of the last days, not only for Israel, but as we have seen, also for the nations.

How shall we sing the songs of Zion? We had to hang our harps on the reeds in the Babylonian wilderness and they called for us to sing. How could we sing when we're sowering for the expulsion and for the exile?

So those who could not sing then will sing with joy upon the restoration and the return, which will doubtless come. And it's true, the only nation in the history of nations that has ever been allowed to return to its original place after an expulsion and captivity is Israel.

Babylon is like a little preview of the more massive return of the last days, not just from a nation, but from all the nations in which I have scattered you. And that's why we're laughing. I mean, this is impossible, this is incredible.

Man could not ever have effected this. This is glorious deliverance to the uttermost and it's eternal in its ramifications and so mighty a demonstration of God that the nations have got to acknowledge, look at the great things he has done for them.

And then he'll do great things also for those nations. So let me conclude that this is just a groundbreaking of a great psalm with some of the quotations. One of the reasons for the delight of Spurgeon's Treasury of David is not only his own insights, but the quotation from other divines of Great Britain whose work is now lost to us in the 1600s.

He then had access to their books or to their printed sermons and he quotes them after giving his own interpretation. So I want to read something of that because these statements are so rich. Their deliverance was so great and incredible that when God brought it to pass, they were as men in a dream, thinking it rather a dream and a vain imagination than a real truth.

Because it was so great a deliverance from so great and lasting a bondage, it seemed too good to be true. It was sudden and unexpected when they little thought or hoped for it. All things seemed desperate, nothing more unlikely or improper or impossible rather.

And the manner was so admirable because it came without the counsel, help or strength of man that it was beyond all human means. Isn't that a great statement? Here's a Thomas Taylor lived from 1576 to 1632 pondering this psalm and taking apart the word great.

Look at the great things that he has done for them. What made it great? It's impossibility. What made it great? It was because something that no man ever could have achieved. What made it great? Because the depth of their bondage and their captivity was so exceeding, it was so great that it sparks a laughter and joy.

Good. Here's another who takes on the phrase, great things he has done for us. And he examines the implication of for us. What were we? What might Zion say that the Lord of heaven and earth should look so graciously upon us?

The meanness of the receiver argues the magnificence of the giver. Mamma mia, if that doesn't call for a moment's respectful silence, the meanness of the receiver argues or gives testimony to the magnificence of the giver.

That is to say, Israel is totally without any deserving at all. You have blasphemed my name in every nation in which I have driven you. There's no qualification, no deserving. So the meanness of the receiver, the lack of qualification argues or testifies to the magnificence of the giver.

I don't think that there's an American commentator alive today, however respected, that could come up with an insight of that kind. I don't know, it is so distinctively British, or even that's not the word for it, of a generation of divines, of men who had such a relationship with God and were so deep into the word and were themselves those who had come out and knew what tears and travail mean, that they could bring such depths of meaning out of a phrase that we were passed on, for us, the great things you've done for us.

Who's the us? The most despicable, vile, treacherous, covenant-breaking, for us, the great things you've done for us. Who's the us? The most despicable, vile, treacherous, covenant-breaking people in the earth, and maybe all for that reason, because it gives God the greater opportunity to show forth his magnificence in delivering us in the time that has come, when the Lord shall restore the fortunes of Zion.

That the Lord should do great things for us? What yet greatens the great things? That it was our greater gracelessness above all other sort of revolcant to throw us into captivity? Or was it for his covenant with our forefathers?

Alas, we had forfeited that long since, again and again, we know not how often. Wherefore, when we remember ourselves that he should do this for us, for us so very unworthy, this is going to be an eternal praise to God.

Zion will ring with the shouts of the saints for a time immemorial and throughout all generations when they shall remember that he has done this for us. We so undeserving, we who have forfeited covenant blessing, we who have defiantly pursued idols, we who have turned a deaf ear to his prophets, we who have blasphemed his name, he's done this for us, this great thing?

It will be the foundation of Israel's continual priestly praise in all generations to come and the nations will join them. It's worth everything, saints, to come out and to sow holy seed in tears in anticipation of this.

The Cost of Sowing and the Promise of Eternal Fruit

And if we are ourselves to bring back sheaves from New York and in the world, it's because the measure that we ourselves were willing to know grief, to know disappointment, to know frustration, to know failure, and for people to say to us, where is your God?

And to ridicule Ben Israel, and what are you doing? And what are you showing? And all the kinds of things that we have had to bear over the years and still do to some degree and will again, will make our joy the greater.

And that he's done this for us, this great thing for us, that we should bear these sheaves? Who are we? And what are we? What are we? Heads and shoulders above most and our own fault doing and own fitting and as we heard from Adam, even coming within an inch of leaving.

Who are we that we should have the privilege of this great thing of coming home undoubtedly with sheaves bearing eternal fruit? Affecting not only Israel, but the nations, the church itself from its own captivity.

So may we be encouraged by this eschatological song. You know, we can see by contrast, I don't want to be derogatory or negative toward the church as it is. But what it has been distributing are conventional packets that are cheap to buy and to employ.

And the fruit of it shows that the Holy Seed that brings a harvest of sheaves is a seed of another kind. I think that for the most part, the invitations that we get from the Lord on those aspects of the church that see themselves in captivity and that groan for the present condition of the church and are frustrated, often have a sense of defeat and hopelessness.

So I wrote, let those who remain in Babylon or who are presently are in that Babylon have their hearts stirred up in the beginning of mercies. And that the first mercy is our word to the church from this song that they can be encouraged that a day of restoration is coming, both for the church and for Israel that will affect all nations.

That the seed itself is the word that we bring to them from this song. And that as the Lord has given this seed, he'll also give the greater fruitage and that they can be encouraged while yet in Babylon until God will turn the church's captivity and even to pray in their own tears for the fulfillment of what is spoken.

Breaking Rocky Soil Through Persistent Faith

So the soil is rocky, overgrown with, this is one of the sources that Spurgeon himself quotes. I think it's so apt for our own understanding of what's before us. The soil is rocky, overgrown with sharp thorns and takes much painful toil to break up and gather out the rock, cut and burn the briars and subdue the stubborn soil, especially with feeble oxen and insignificant plow.

Surely he who labors hard in cold or rain, in fear and danger, in poverty and want, casting his precious seed into the ground will surely come again at harvest time with rejoicing, bearing his sheaves with him.

In the sweat of his brow, the husbandman tills the land and casts the soil, the seed into the ground, where for a time it lies dead and buried. A dark and dreary winter follows and all seems to be lost until matured by the sun's heat.

When I read that I thought, until matured by the heat of persecution. When that heat comes, the seed that has been sown, and though it's been sown and covered over for a winter in which there's been no response, will then begin to sprout so that our labors will not have been in vain.

And the peculiar character of the service of the church is to endure, overcome, be persistent, not flag, not throw in the towel because we are not gratified by an immediate fruitage. We've got to labor knowing that the day will come doubtlessly in which we shall harvest what we have sown.

When the heat of persecution comes, in the time of Jacob's trouble, those words that have been sown into the spirit of Jews whose minds have refused it and whose mouths have abused it will doubtless break forth out of that ground that had been broken by our labor and will be the harvest that we also shall gather and will include the nations.

Closing Prayer for Restoration and Harvest

So Lord, thank you. Wow, my God, what a psalm. What an eschatological psalm, so in advance of the event, and yet we have a glimpse already of those things being set in motion for its fulfillment. What an encouragement for us, Lord, as we contemplate now the most difficult mission field you have ever set before us.

Yes, we have labored in some hard places and in some resistant places in the church, but this ground, this hardened ground, this thorny ground, this unwilling soil, my God, is ultimate and it needs to be broken.

And so we will be going by faith and willing for the labor, my God, even though we shall not see the immediate return, to break it up and to sow the holy seed that you will give, not some canned phrases, are you saved, brother, but the word, the holy seed, the way even to express it, however it's resisted, it will go into that soil and it will sprout up unto fruit eternal.

So my God, thank you for the invitation to come out, come out of our comfort, come out of our security, take the risk of what that will mean, for the harvest will be great. And when it comes with suddenness, Lord, our joy will be so great that we can't even express it verbally, we can't even sing it, we will laugh, we will titter, we will, what's that word?

Giggle. Not because it's cute or because it's funny, it's because we can't express the inexpressible joy of your faithfulness when the Lord will turn again the captivity of Zion. You will, Lord, we know that.

And the nations themselves will be taken up as the result into the so great salvation of God. And Israel will say it was worthwhile even for the captivity that such a demonstration could come to them that would be irrefutable and end all argument and debate.

So my God, we thank you. May we again and again dip into this psalm for encouragement and we bless you for the privilege, Lord, of being participants in so great a schema as this psalm sets forth and that we have already to some measure paid our dues in the experience of banishment and exile and being cast out and the taunts and derision of those who have said to us, where is your God?

So we are privileged, Lord, beyond all speaking, for we know the fruit that we shall obtain will be eternal. Sheaves of it that our arms can barely carry and we thank you and give you praise, Lord. And even now give you a shout of joy and even now, my God, we want to laugh with happy expectation for what we know will undoubtedly come because your word says so.

Therefore do we give you the praise, the glory, and the honor for so great an encouragement in Yeshua's holy name. Amen. Amen.