Going Up, Looking Back, Keeping On

My assignment which was given was Psalm 126. And so let us just briefly pray, and then we’ll look at this together.

Make the Book live to me, O Lord,
Show me yourself within your Word,
Show me myself and show me my Savior,
And make the Book live to me.[1]

For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

It’s wonderful to be able to sing together, isn’t it? It’s a unique feature, actually, of Christianity. If you’ve gone to various parts of the world, you will know that many of the religions of the world which hold significant influence, they may chant, they may make various noises, but it is unique to the people of God that we sing. And all the way through the Bible, we recognize this: the song of Moses, and Miriam with her tambourine, and the unfolding wonder of it all.[2] And then when you come to the hymnbook of the early people of God, the Psalms, we find the same thing: “Come, let us sing to the Lord,”[3] “Let us sing a new song,”[4] and so on.

And so, to be able to be led in song tonight—and then to realize that when we turn to these psalms, we’re actually singing the songs that Jesus himself sang. It is quite a thought, isn’t it, to recognize that these Psalms of Ascent would not only have been familiar to Jesus but were probably entirely known by Jesus and that the words that we’ve just heard read for us so clearly and so helpfully would be words that were on the lips of Jesus?

Now, I’ve gathered my thoughts around three phrases, and I want to tell you what they are so that you will know that we’re making progress. Now, the first phrase is going up, the second is looking back, and the third is keeping on.

Now, when we turn to the psalm in this way, I find it very helpful to remind myself of a couple of things—first of all, what I learned as a boy: that the Bible is a book about Jesus. In the Old Testament he is predicted, in the Gospels he’s revealed, in the Acts he is preached, in the Epistles he’s explained, and in the book of Revelation he is expected—so that if we take our eyes off Jesus, then we will eventually lose our way around the Bible, because it is all ultimately pointing to him who is the living Word. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing that I find helpful is a quote from B. B. Warfield, the theologian, who described the Old Testament as “a chamber richly furnished but dimly [lit].”[5] When I went into my residence last evening, all the lights were on—at least it would appear so. And so nothing was indistinct to me. But when I went through, eventually, and turned them all off—because as a Scotsman, I don’t like to waste electricity or anything—and when I turned them all off and then, later in the evening, I got up to make a short visit, then I realized, “I’m just not so sure I know my way around this place.” And so the light had to come back on.

Now, in saying that, in observing that, the Old Testament is complete in its own right. And what the New Testament does is shine light to make the existing furniture visible. It brings into clearer view much of what, in it, is at first only dimly perceived. So, in the progressive revelation of God, as we go through our Bibles, we’re able to read the Old Testament in anticipation of the New and to recognize that the New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed.[6] And that’s why we read the whole Bible.

When Paul writes to the Roman Christians, he says to them in Romans 15:4, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Timothy, of course, understood this. Paul is able to say to him, “You know those from whom you learned these things and how from infancy you have known the story of salvation.” And now he’s saying to him, “I want you to make sure that you keep that story going.”[7]

Going Up

Now, I say all of this just to set it in context. When we begin to understand or try and understand what is here in this psalm, when we think about the phrase “the fortunes of Zion,” inevitably we must say, “Well, what about the fortunes of Zion? This is Lynchburg, Virginia. This is the twenty-first century. How am I to be helped in understanding?” Well, in light of what I have just said: that the New Testament doesn’t correct or replace what we have in the Old Testament, but rather, it perfects it and enlarges our understanding of what God has done, so that the pilgrims who are singing the songs of Zion are going up. That’s the first one: They are going up.

The New Testament doesn’t correct or replace what we have in the Old Testament, but rather, it perfects it and enlarges our understanding of what God has done.

And the picture in each of these psalms is of this. In Hebrew, they are aliyah—they are “going up” to the house of the Lord. You’ve already done 122, I’m sure, and perhaps you have enjoyed this as you’ve thought about going to church on a Sunday:

I was glad when they said to me,
 “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet have been standing
 within your gates, O Jerusalem![8]

Well, no, they haven’t! There might be some of us that have been to Jerusalem, but most of us haven’t been to Jerusalem. So what is it that we’re actually saying? We’ll come to that.

Jerusalem—built as a city
 that is bound firmly together,
to which the tribes go up,
 the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
 to give thanks to the name of the Lord.[9]

So, when we think about going up to Jerusalem, we think wrongly if we think in terms of height above sea level. Because actually, the mountains that surround Jerusalem are not particularly high. There are certainly higher mountains in the Shenandoah Valley and all through the Carolinas than what we find there. So it is referred to as a “going up” not because of its height in physical terms but because it was the most important place on earth. The most important place on earth. Why? Because it was there that the temple was set, and it was there where God, in Old Testament symbolism, lived upon the earth.

Well, of course, God is omnipresent. But the significance of it was, as we have seen in our understanding of the Old Testament, the ark was there, and eventually the temple, and so on, and so the people saw it in those terms. That’s why it says that it was here that the tribes that would have warred against one another were brought together. It was here that judgment was established, that authority was put in place. Here, “David’s greater Son”[10] has built his royal throne—Jesus ultimately, but all of it pointing in that direction.

I found it helpful just to say to myself, “So I should think in terms of intimacy in meeting with God, in terms of security in being established and framed by the power of God, and harmony, where those who otherwise would have been at war with one another are brought together to sing the songs of Zion.”

Now, think about this for a moment: intimacy, security, harmony—Jerusalem! But that is clearly not the case this evening in Jerusalem. That’s why when we read our Bibles, we have to be thinking. And when we read the prophets, we realize that the prophets… And incidentally, when you read Isaiah or Jeremiah or any of the prophets, it’s a bit like going hill climbing. When you go hill climbing, if you come with me to Scotland and we go in the Cairngorm Mountains, I can take you to places where it’s a fair struggle to get so far, and you say to yourself, “Well, when we get there, we’ll be at the top.” But when you get there, you realize that the top is further up again. And the same is true in terms of the words that the prophets were speaking. There are points along the journey that are fulfillments but not the complete fulfillments. And the prophets, when we read them (for example, Isaiah chapter 2), anticipated a day when there would be a Jerusalem that would actually fit and live up to its name—where, in that Jerusalem: intimacy, security, harmony completed.

Now, we may return to this in a moment or two, but for the time being, we move on from “going up”—because that’s what they were doing—to consider the two pieces of this psalm. And you will notice that it falls apart or breaks evenly between verse 3 and verse 4.

Looking Back

There are in the place where I’m staying some beautiful paintings, and I’ve enjoyed them very much. Indeed, around the place there are many lovely things. But I haven’t seen a diptych in my travels in the last twenty-four hours. Those of you who are artists know what a diptych is, and that is that it is a painting that is set on two panels, and they’re usually hinged, and the information on panel one and panel two intersects—they intersect with one another—and when you open it in its entirety, then it gives you the complete picture.

And what you actually have here in this psalm is just that: two hinged panels relating to each other. Panel number one brings me to my second phrase—namely, “looking back.” “Looking back.” “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.” You see, they are looking back to the joy that has been experienced by them, and in looking back, they’re able to relive it. Every so often, it’s a wonderful thing when we can take out a photograph or whatever it might be, and we look at it, and it is from a time that is long ago and far away, and yet it brings to us such a sense of awe and wonder and gratitude that we relive it. And here we find them reliving this, realizing that their circumstances had been so radically transformed.

In fact, the transformation was so remarkable that they found themselves saying to one another, “Are we dreaming this, or is this really happening?” And it actually describes the fact that they were so delighted because their history had been that God had brought them out of Egypt into the land. But their story was one of idolatry, it was one of rebellion, and then it was one of exile. And God had told them, “If you continue like this, you will be carted off.” And that’s exactly what happened to them.

And that was why Psalm [137] describes the circumstances where they said, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept, and we hanged our harps, as it were, on the willow trees, looking to one another and saying, ‘How can we sing the songs of Zion in this strange place?’” And indeed, it’s recorded that the captors taunted them, saying, “Why don’t you sing some of your songs?”[11] Well, it would seem so incongruous, wouldn’t it?

Incidentally and in passing, disobedience and heartfelt song singing and praise do not sleep in the same bed. I have discovered that in the journey of my life, when I am disobedient to the clear instructions of God’s Word, when I am tempted to try it on my own way, if my friends were to come to me and say, “Why don’t you sing some of those songs, like ‘How Deep the Father’s Love for [You]’? Why don’t you sing about these things?” Well, my disobedience has silenced my tongue. I could affect it, I could fake it, but it would be less than real.

Now, it is this change that is then provided for us. “How we laughed!” it says: “Our mouth was filled with laughter.” It does good. It’s good. I mean, laughing’s good. Laughing at the right things is good. It does good for us, like a medicine.[12]

Disobedience and heartfelt song singing and praise do not sleep in the same bed.

“And our tongue with shouts of joy.” God had kept his promise. He said that he would bring them back, and he had brought them back, and they could hardly believe it.

But if you’re looking at your text, you will notice something significant:

Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
 … our tongue with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations…

First of all, “they said.” In other words, the watching world looked on and saw the reality of this, and then they made the deduction—and accurately so—“[Yahweh] has done great things for them.” “[Yahweh] has done great things for them.”

When the watching world looks on the people of God as they lift their voices in joyful song, the world has got no explanation for why you would even do that. They’ve got no idea that in this room tonight, on a Wednesday night, in this place, in this vast continent, there’s a crowd like this essentially singing the songs of Zion. And so they said, “Either these people have lost their minds, or they know something that we don’t know.” And that is exactly what was going on.

If you think about it, all the way through the Bible that is the case: If you can explain what’s going on, the chances are that God didn’t do it. So, let’s say we landed in Jericho, and we said, “What is going on here?” Somebody said, “Well, frankly, I haven’t got a clue myself, but they’ve taken to just keeping walking round and round this place, and it seems a futile exercise to me.” And then, of course, the walls came down, and they looked on, and they realized, “This is something that God has done.”

We have sung about that hill and that tomb and that scattered landscape. And into that, here is something that God has done. He was laid in the grave. People concluded that the whole story was over, brought to an end in a Palestinian tomb, and it was all collapsed—even some of the disciples themselves. But then, suddenly, the songs emerged, and the music began to play, and the laughter began. And not only did the watching world know, but they themselves knew, and then they said—that’s the people of God—“The Lord has done great things for us,” and “we are glad.”

Are you glad tonight? Part of the fruit of the Spirit is, of course, joy: a genuine, deep-seated reality that is not dependent on the moving of circumstances, whether I’m happy in my relationships, whether I am successful in my studies, whether I am clear about my future or not—that even in the midst of that…

There’s a wonderful line or two in a hymn. Actually, the hymn begins, “My God, I thank thee, who has made the earth so bright,” and it goes on from there. And at one point in the hymn, the hymn writer says,

I thank thee, too, that all my joy
Is touched with pain,
That shadows fall on brightest hours,
And thorns remain,
So that earth’s bliss may be my guide
And not my chain.[13]

And the joy that emerges here, in the first section of this psalm, is the joy of those who are reliving the wonder of what God has done.[SK3]

And that’s the story of our conversion, isn’t it? That God has brought us out of bondage, brought us out of sterility, brought us out of our own selfish preoccupations. He’s put a new song in our hearts—a song of praise to him. And it emerges, and we join with others who share that same joy.

Keeping On

So, going up, looking back, and keeping on.

It’s good when you read your Bible, incidentally, to make sure that you come to it, if you like, agnostically. It’s easier with passages that are unfamiliar to us than passages that are familiar to us. What I mean by that is, if you read your Bible, and you say, “Well, oh yeah, I know all about this one; I did this one before,” that the chances are you may actually miss things. So it’s good to come to the Bible saying, “Teach me. Holy Spirit, open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things in your law”[14]—again, the words of the psalmist.

And if you are thinking at all—which I’m sure includes more than half a dozen of us—you should be struck, we should be struck, by the shift from verse 3 to verse 4. How does it begin? “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion.” That’s panel one. Panel two: “Restore our fortunes.”

But didn’t we just do the reliving of the reality of fortunes restored? And the answer is yes. So, if you like, if that is the fortunes of God relived, then these are the fortunes, if you like, reclaimed. If panel one is about dreaming, panel two is about praying. Because what the psalmist is saying here is simply this: that this is a wonderful reality upon which we’re reflecting, but there’s still more to come, and there’s still more to be done. There’s still more to be discovered.

More about Jesus would I know,
More of his grace to others show,
More of his saving [goodness] see,
More of his love who died for me.[15]

There’s more! And there’s more here.

The fellow who taught me Old Testament in London a long time ago entitled his coverage of this psalm “God Can Do It Again.” “God Can Do It Again.” And that is exactly what is conveyed here in the second panel: “Restore our fortunes, … Lord.” In other words, “Thank you for all you’ve done. We look back with gratitude. But we look forward, and we realize that we need fresh evidences of your goodness, wonderful kindnesses that will be ours to convey to our children and to those who will come behind us.”

Again, the hymn writer captures it—“My God, I thank thee, who has made the earth so bright”—and goes on[AM4],

I thank you, Lord, that you have kept
The best in store;
We have enough, yet not too much
To long for more.[16]

There’s a sense in which our satisfaction yields a lack of satisfaction. I mean, in a relationship—let’s say you’re engaged to be married. Okay. It’s good, right? It’s good. But it’s not as good as getting married. Trust me! And when you get married, if you’re going to say, “Oh, well, that was it; I got married,” then I feel heart sorry for you. Because you long for the reality of it to be your fullness again and again and contribute to it.

In the same way, these folks are asking that the past would not lead them into a kind of stultifying existence, nor that it would create in them a sense of nostalgia—“Oh, it was great back then!” “No!” they said. “Restore our fortunes.”

And notice: two ways. First of all: suddenly. Suddenly. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb!” Now, I know very little about these things, but I do know that deserts are not known for having swimming pools. Indeed, the wadis of the deserts are just sandy wastes unless they are flooded by the provision of rain. And so what they’re saying is this: “Here we are, in the desert once again. And we want you, God, to turn these dry gullies into pools by your torrent.” “As the deer pants for water, so my soul longs for you. My soul thirsts for you, the living God.”[17] “For you, the living God.” That’s what they’re saying: “Yesterday was good. We’re glad of that. We’ve learned that lesson. But here we are. Come and stir my heart, stir our hearts. Fill us up. Fill us up the way you can fill the wadis of the desert.”

And again, when you think about this in relationship to the Bible sending us forward from the Old Testament, from the Psalms, and into Jesus—you think about Jesus before his death and resurrection, gathering with people. We know that he went up to Jerusalem when he was just a boy of twelve. We know that record because it’s there for us.[18] And all that period of time from twelve to when we’re introduced to him again at the age of thirty, you can imagine, as he sings these songs, as he recognizes a dimension in them that wouldn’t be understood by even the people who are around him, knowing that the longing of the people of God to have their thirst quenched was going to be quenched in him—that he was the one who would say, “If you come to me, then out of your heart will flow streams of living water.”[19] That’s what I mean about allowing the Psalms to take us to where we need to be.

The Scottish hymn writer captures it perfectly:

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Behold, I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down, and drink, and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in him.[20]

That would be the sudden intervention for which they pray. But that sudden intervention is equally matched by not the suddenly aspect but the gradually aspect of it. Because

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 [the] sheaves with him.

“Restore to [us] the joy of [our] salvation.”[21]

Oh, what are you going to do, just sit and wait for something to happen? No, you could never be a farmer if that’s the way you approach things. You tell your wife as a farmer, “I don’t think I’ll do anything at all. I’ll just wait for God to do something.”

She said, “I beg your pardon? Don’t you have a part in this—to go and sow the seed?”

“Oh, yes, that’s right. I suppose I probably should. But I don’t feel like it.”

That doesn’t matter. In fact, it makes me burst into tears, thinking I have to get up so early and do all of these parts and pieces of it. But in actual fact (and hear me on this), steady, persistent progress—no drama, just slogging away—is part and parcel of the Christian pilgrimage. Don’t let anybody tell you for a moment that you can live entirely in panel one or that you can simply wait for the great outflow of the Spirit of God, absent anything else. No! It is by a steady, persistent, often dogged commitment to doing the right thing that we discover that God opens the windows of heaven and blesses us.

These two panels, then, are vitally important. This is how The New Bible Commentary gives us an apt summary. This is what it says. I found this very helpful; perhaps you will too: “There is … no single act of God which will bring [God’s people] into unbroken joy, [remove] them [from] trials and temptations, [and] establish them in perfection this side of heaven.”[22]

I’ve lived a fair amount of my life, and as your age, I was interested in… This person had that story; this person had another story. I wanted to find out the answer to all of my questions. And people told me, you know, “It’ll be possible for you. If you just do this or just do that, then you will be elevated. You’ll be a thousand feet above the clouds.” And I listened to what they said. And I don’t know whether I only got up to four hundred feet above or whatever it was, but it didn’t prove true.

No, it’s true. The realistic aspect of it is that the tears that are represented in the very establishment in which we find ourselves this evening—those tears, those prayers, those longings, those dreams, those reflecting on how it was but saying, “Okay, God, we understand that. But restore to us our fortunes. Grant that as we go forward, we will see more of you, we will know more of you.”

If you think about it in personal terms, we understand it. If you think about it in ecclesiastical terms or congregational terms—we all know the story of congregations that have known the blessing of God, and then, apparently, it has vanished somewhat, and they’ve found themselves in prayer, asking for restoration. If you think about it in national terms, if you know anything about Scotland, you know that it was justifiably “the Land of the Book.” You know that the city of my birth had as its motto “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word and the praising of his name.” Today, the motto is simply “Let Glasgow flourish”—that the Land of the Book, the Bible, the theologians, those who shepherded the people of God, is in many ways a dim and distant past.

We have only to plant and to water and to watch as God makes things grow.

So, the people come, and they relive what they have known or what they have read, and they ask God to restore to them that experience.

Well, if you think about it in terms of mission as well, we’re cast upon God, aren’t we? That we have only to plant and to water and to watch as God makes things grow. Again, the hymn writer:

All we can do is nothing worth,
Unless God blesses the deed;
[And] vainly we [long] for the harvest-[time]
Till God gives life to the seed.
… Nearer and nearer draws the time,
The time that [will] surely be
When the earth [will] be filled
With the glory of God
As the waters cover the sea.[23]

That’s what the prophets anticipated along the journey in the hill climb. There were points along the way, but it’s not finished. The story is not finished.

And for those of you who are saying to yourself, “Well, what about what you just said about Jerusalem? How are we to make sense of this?”—I’m not going to answer that question for you, but I’m going to point you in what I think is the right direction, to leave you to figure this out.

Jerusalem, the temple, God’s presence—the symbol of God’s presence on earth. Where is God’s presence on earth tonight? Not in the geographical city of Jerusalem. That temple has been destroyed. Indeed, when the writer of Hebrews speaks to the people concerning the reality that they enjoy (Hebrews 12:22), he’s reminding them that they are no longer looking back at Sinai, but they have come now—they have come now, present tense—to this place, the place where there is intimacy and security and harmony.

You must think this out for yourselves, but it seems to me that the Old Testament national and territorial pictures are preparing us for a kingdom that is not of this world. Think about it: When Jesus is interrogated before his death, he says, “Listen: My kingdom is not of this world. Otherwise, my disciples would fight.”[24] Well, where is it? What is it that we look to?

Well, let me end with this: There is yet a going up. There is a going up still to be. Revelation 21:

[And] then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, [the] new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, … as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “… The dwelling … of God is with man.”[25]

That in the same way, in the incarnation, God has stepped down into time in the person of Jesus. And when he brings things to fruition, he will step down once again. And in that same chapter—which you’re familiar with, I’m sure—John says in 22, “And I saw no temple in the city, for [the] temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”

So here we sit in the twenty-first century, learning from the history of the people of God. They were the ones going up. They were the ones looking back. They were the ones keeping on.

Perhaps we put it this way: We now, tonight, are the privileged ones looking back, encouraged to be keeping on because we’re looking forward to a day when we’re going up.

Let’s pray together:

Our gracious God, we are children before the vastness of your truth. We are searchers in your Word, for we know that it is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.[26] We thank you that all the things that have been written in the past are there for our encouragement, so that as we endure, as we learn to look back and look around and look forward, our gaze might be filled with Jesus. Thank you that Paul reminds us in Corinthians that all the prophecies are actually fulfilled in Jesus,[27] that they are foreshadowed in your people as we live to the praise of your glory,[28] and they are anticipated on that day when all that we see now through a glass darkly may suddenly become illumined to us, and then we will know even as tonight we are known.[29] Help us to sing these songs, to praise you, ’cause you are the almighty God and worthy of our praise. And in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

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[1] R. Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me.” Language modernized.

[2] See Exodus 15:1–21.

[3] Psalm 95:1 (ESV).

[4] Psalms 33:3; 96:1; 98:1; 149:1 (paraphrased).

[5] Benjamin B. Warfield, “Trinity,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr (Chicago: Howard-Severance, 1915), 5:3014.

[6] Augustine, Questions on the Heptateuch 2.73.

[7] 2 Timothy 3:14–15 (paraphrased).

[8] Psalm 122:1–2 (ESV).

[9] Psalm 122:3–4 (ESV).

[10] James Montgomery, “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed” (1821).

[11] Psalm 137:1–3 (paraphrased).

[12] See Proverbs 17:22.

[13] Adelaide Anne Procter, “My God, I Thank Thee” (1858). Lyrics lightly altered.

[14] See Psalm 119:18.

[15] Eliza Edmunds Hewitt, “More About Jesus” (1887).

[16] Procter, “My God, I Thank Thee.” Language modernized.

[17] Psalm 42:1–2 (paraphrased).

[18] See Luke 2:41–51.

[19] John 7:38 (paraphrased).

[20] Horatius Bonar, “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” (1846).

[21] Psalm 51:12 (ESV).

[22] Leslie S. M’Caw and J. A. Motyer, “The Psalms,” in The New Bible Commentary, 3rd ed., ed. D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 531.

[23] Arthur Campbell Ainger, “God Is Working His Purpose Out” (1894).

[24] John 18:36 (paraphrased).

[25] Revelation 21:1–3 (ESV).

[26] See Psalm 119:105.

[27] See 2 Corinthians 1:20.

[28] See Ephesians 1:12.

[29] See 1 Corinthians 13:12.