424: Desert Bloom | Tim Henderson

Because I think that Christmas jam is probably my favorite annual event at Church of the Holy Spirit. It's super fun. You should come. It's just magically beautiful and great. So come join us tonight.

You might remember this summer we studied Ecclesiastes, and I loved that study. I think it's an incredibly insightful book, and it was so fun to unpack it with you guys. Everything about it from Heaven to the Grasshopper, I thought was fun and interesting, but there was one talk in particular in that series that seemed to really strike a chord with folks, and it was the one about enjoying life. We talked about life is hard, and sometimes you just need to eat ice cream, you need to go do fun things. I want you to remember that because the theme out of Ecclesiastes is echoed here in Psalm 126, which we're going to look at. It's the passage that Bob read.

Understanding Psalm 126

I want to give you a little bit of context for Psalm 126 first, and then we'll jump in and unpack this. I think there are some important insights in it for us.

So how many Psalms are there? Do you know? 150. There's 150. And it's actually more organized than people might think. It might seem like it's just a random collection of things, but it's not. The way it works is the first two books, Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, are the introduction to the whole thing. What's going on in Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 is really key and critical. It sets the foundation. And then the conclusion of the psalter is the last five: 146, 147, 148, 149, 150. So you got these two and five. They are the bookends to the whole thing. And then in between, if you look when you read through your Bible, you'll see these notations. There are five subsections. We call them books, five chunks. In between, like from 3 to 145, is where these five books reside, and then each of those books further breaks down.

If we go to the last one, to book five, there is a section there known as the songs of ascent. The songs of ascent. Ascent as in to climb, to go higher, to go up. And the songs of ascent were to be sung when they were ascending into a very specific place. Do you know where they're going when they sing the songs of ascent? Jerusalem. Jerusalem's up. It's not a big mountain, but it's a mountain. You always go up to Jerusalem. It doesn't matter if you're coming from the North or the South. And in particular, the songs of ascent were sung during a very particular festival.

Anybody know which of the Jewish festivals they're keyed to? Tabernacle. Very good. That's exactly right. Tabernacle or booth. So the festival of booths, which is the same as tabernacle—we would think of them as tents. That's when these things were sung. The feast of tabernacles or the feast of booths was a commemoration of Israel's time in the wilderness. For forty years, they lived in the desert and everybody lived in a tent, traveling around for forty years in the wilderness. There's basically a divinely ordained, nationally observed, week-long camping trip where they live in these tents.

If you think about that time that they spent in the wilderness, it was a mixture. On the one hand, they're in a desert, and that's terrible, and they're waiting for everybody to die, and so that's pretty terrible. But it is also a time of miraculous provision. I mean, they're drinking water that comes from a rock. God is raining down bread from heaven. The songs of ascent cover this spectrum from things that are like lament and sorrow and grief for this journey, but there's also songs of praise. And Psalm 126 is one of those. It's in this collection of the songs they sing on the way to Jerusalem as they are remembering both the bitterness and the rescue and the miraculous provision of their time.

Psalm 126, therefore, is for us, but it is particularly on the joy side. As they're climbing up, it's a song about happiness. I want to read it again, the same thing that Bob read, but what I do is I just want you to notice laughter and gladness and joy and joy and joy. There is an asterisk. We'll see that as we go. But it's a song of praise. So here's how it goes. Psalm 126. Oh, and by the way, verse zero is part of the song.

The verse zeros in your Bible, in the Psalms, those are sometimes added by people after the Bible is done. Verse zero is not that. When it says "the song of ascent," that's not a notation added by the NIV people—that's Hebrew scripture. So it really begins at verse zero.

A song of ascent. 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, and we are glad." Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb. 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. — Psalm 126

There's something a little bit indecent about autopsying a poem. Maybe you're supposed to just enjoy it in its artfulness. But we're going to autopsy it because I want to take it apart. I want you to see what is happening with it so that when we put it back together, it might be more useful to you. I think this is helpful. And if you can grasp the themes of this one, I think it'll be helpful to you maybe for a long time in the rest of your life.

What you're gonna notice is a memory, a request, and an expectation. That's basically the outline of Psalm 126: a memory, a request, then an expectation.

The Memory

Look at the memory in verse one. It's a really happy memory:

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.

Have you ever been delusionally happy? Have you ever laughed not because something was funny, but because you were just so happy? Sometimes it might be relief. Sometimes we'll laugh in the midst of relief because we're so glad. That's what he's describing. Our mouth was full of laughter. There's this gladness and joy. The author is remembering with giddiness something so fantastic, so great, that he wasn't the only one that experienced it—other people noticed it too.

Then they said among the nations, "The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad."

Their joy was so great, the rescue so significant, that it was noticed by others. I wonder: are you aware of the idea of an Ebenezer stone? Is that meaningful to you? You'd find out about this in 2 Samuel 4:7. The Israelites had this great victory. The Philistines were going to kill them, but then they prevailed, and they were so happy. They're like, "We never should forget this." So they took a big rock, set it up on end—like it naturally would want to lie down because it's heavy—but they hoisted it up and made a monument. The point of an Ebenezer stone is to say, "I don't ever want to forget this because I know it's going to be a difficult day that lies ahead, and I'm going to need to remember that things worked out."

Some of you may have had that as a habit in your life—to build monuments, to commemorate, to memorialize when the Lord came through. For Kelly and me, we've been married and in ministry for thirty-some years. We've put up a whole bunch of Ebenezer stones—all kinds of times that we've had to remember. As I was studying Psalm 126 this week, my mind started going through all these different moments in our lives where God was faithful. I want to tell you about one of them. I could tell this story over an hour. I won't—I'll be brief.

We were on staff with Campus Crusade. Kelly and I were with Cru, mostly at Penn State for twenty years. Because we were on staff with Cru, we had the privilege of raising our own support. We had a team of families—and we still do with Blue Ridge Fellows—that supported us, giving money every month so that we could spend our time on campus doing evangelism and discipleship. We loved it.

But this was around February, maybe. We'd been on staff for a long time, but I never really raised a lot of money because raising money is hard and kind of frightening. We were poor, basically. And we just needed to raise a ton of money.

I'd gotten to the point that I was tired of being poor, and I was worried we're not saving money for retirement, we're not saving for college. This is not a good scene. So we sat down, worked up our budget, and figured out how much support we lost. I did all the math and realized I needed to raise $2,200 in new monthly support. And I was like, it's never gonna happen. We're dead.

But I decided to stop being such a baby about it. I just sought the Lord and said, "Lord, I'm gonna trust you. You're rich. You have everything. You're not intimidated by things that intimidate me." And I got to where I had enough faith to trust him that he's gonna provide $2,300 in new monthly support. We're just gonna make some phone calls and invite some people to join the team.

Well, right there, literally right as I'm finally catching my wind, like, okay, let's do this. Kelly walks into the living room and says, "Tim, I just calculated what we call solid monthly support—where you see what people have pledged versus what they're actually giving or who dropped off your team. It's actually worse. We're $1,200 monthly behind where you thought we were."

So I needed to raise $1,200 before I raised a dime. Now it's not $2,200—it's $3,400 a month. And I'm like, that is just insane. We're never gonna get that done.

But then I rallied and said, "Okay, Lord, what's the difference? It's not like you could do this but you can't do that. But I need you to burn this first $1,200 in a week. Just clear the first part. Give me to where I thought I was, and then I'll trust you for the $2,200."

And then I went to work. I started making phone calls and inviting people to sit down and have a conversation, to talk about what we're doing at Penn State, how students are coming to faith, the development that's happening in their lives, and just telling the story. But I asked him, "Lord, in a week, in seven days, would you provide this $1,200 in new monthly support?"

One week later, it's Monday. I would make support calls from 7 PM to 9 PM every night—kind of after dinner, before bedtime—and you've got this little window of time that you could reach people. It was 8:50 PM, Monday night. I had raised—well, the Lord had provided—$800 in new monthly support. I was asking for $1,200. We got the $800, which was great and I should have had no complaint. So I began to basically repent. "You owe me nothing. It's arbitrary. What difference does it make? And it's $800, and I just wanna be done."

The phone just gets heavier and heavier, you know, as the night goes on. I just wanna be done. But I'm like, "Okay, Lord, I asked you to do this. I will make one more phone call." But it's almost 9:00, and I don't wanna bug anybody too late. But I remembered a guy, Paul. He had just graduated from our ministry, Paul Sites, and he moved to San Francisco, and he was working out there. So it's the West Coast, three hours earlier. So I just called Paul and explained to him what we were doing. I didn't mention that we were trying to raise $1,200 a month or $3,400 a month. I didn't tell him that we were $800 toward this goal. I didn't tell him any of that. I just explained, "Hey, this is—he knows part of the ministry, and would you be willing to join our team?" Our typical question was we'd always ask anybody to come on our team for $100 a month.

And Paul says to me, "Tim, yes, absolutely. Penn State crew changed my life. I would love to come on your team. I'll come on your team for $400 a month."

And you guys, it's not about the money. It was this moment. It was like when Peter has this miraculous catch of fish. Do you remember his response? His emotional response when he catches the fish? And he's like, "Whoa. Just get away from me. Who am I for you to do this for me?"

And this is—I'm on the phone in my basement in State College, and Paul Sites—nobody comes on our team for $400 a month. I mean, you could, but nobody else had at that point. And I'm like, what in the world?

You guys, it was to the penny, to the minute. That $1,200 was provided in seven days. And then it took us nine weeks to raise the other $2,200, which was great. So in ten weeks, we raised $3,400 in new monthly support, and it totally changed our lives. Genuinely. We went from being absolutely underfunded and worried about money all the time to, the Lord is our provider. And it was that—but that was Paul Sites that night that God used him.

And so I have thought about Paul and that moment countless times because there have been countless times that I'm like, oh, we're dead. We're dead. Right? And the fact of seeing what the Lord had done in that moment has been so incredibly helpful to me. That rock, that stone, and then countless others. That's what he's doing here. In Psalm 126 when he says:

The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad. — Psalm 126:1

That's the memory of Psalm 126. Take a look at verse four because that contains the request.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb. — Psalm 126:4

And then you know what that means? It means that things aren't great anymore. It had been great. We remember when it was so great, but right now, we're back in the desert. And the request—he says literally—the request for restoration is for restoration like streams in the Negeb.

Now the Negeb or the Negev—depending how you transliterate it—is a desert. There's no streams in the desert. It's just dry, and it's sand, and everything is dead. But every once in a while, the rains come. Have you guys ever seen these? In fact, I got an image of this. Have you seen these super blooms? This will happen in Southern California every once in a while. It'll happen in various deserts around the globe. It can happen in the Negev where it rains, and then this riot of color just erupts. There's life out of death. This is what he's asking for. He's like, it has been dry. There are no streams, but would you bring the rain? And essentially, what Psalm 126 is saying is, Lord, do it again. You did it before. Would you do it again?

There's a memory. There is a request. But notice this, because I think this third piece is maybe the most important part. There is an expectation.

Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seeds for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. — Psalm 126:5-6

It's not just a request, it's an expectation. Lord, you will bring the rains, and there will be a harvest. Now this seed might literally be watered with our own tears, but there is a joyful harvest coming. That is what Psalm 126 is saying. There's a memory, there's a request, and there's an expectation.

The Two Things You Need to Take Away

Now, I want you to put it all together though, kind of like reassemble this thing because this is the part that I think you might need to take away and remember this in five years, and in ten years, and in twenty-five years. The person who writes this song, or maybe even the person who's reading this song, the person who's singing this song, might be going through something difficult. You might be going through something difficult. Maybe you're in the desert like the author was in the desert. There's something terrible, and you need rescue, escape, restoration. Right? Maybe you're longing for that. And in the midst of it, the singers—us—do two things. These are the two things you gotta take away.

First thing is that we remember God's past faithfulness. It is a conscious choice. I'm going to remember this. We remember when our mouths were full of laughter. We remember that you did it. Oh, we were so happy. I remember that you did it. I remember being in my basement and having Paul say, yeah, I'll come on your team for $400 a month. This act of remembering is what we call gratitude, and you need gratitude. We don't just exercise gratitude. We don't just communicate our gratefulness because God deserves it, because he's worthy of it, because we wanna appreciate him and honor him. That's all true. But we also do it because gratitude is healing for us. It fixes us. Right? It moves our hearts off of our worries, and we can see that he's done great things. God deserves our praise, but it is good for us to remember what God has done and to declare it.

But this is really important: all the gratitude in the world is not sufficient. You also need hope. In fact, I would suggest that you need hope even more than you need gratitude. What we need is an expectation of what he will do. In fact, I would suggest to you that the chief virtue of gratitude is that it makes hope possible. It is our happy memory of what he has done that shapes and frames our expectation of what he will do.

So imagine yourself as a telephone pole—tall, skinny, and maybe not all that sturdy. You're at risk of being blown over by the wind, but you have two lines coming off of you. Okay? The first is gratitude. It anchors you, bam, to your own past. It is your conscious memory of his kindness and provision and goodness to you. You are grateful for what he does. You're reminded of his mercy and his kindness and his faithfulness of every time in your life that God has come through for you. And the second line races into your future. And that line is what we call hope.

Not just a sense of what he has done, but an expectation of what he will do again. A belief that your best days lie ahead of you, and in fact, that infinite and increasing joy awaits you. And you guys, it is gratitude for the past that produces hope for the future. And then his work gets really good: gratitude produces hope. This hope for the future spills back into present pain to make this moment bearable. This is simply the way human beings function, and this little short psalm captures it all.

This is how human beings get through this world. Right there. Psalm 126. We are anchored with gratitude to our past, anchored with hope for the future, and that hope spills back into the present moment. This is the divine strategy for surviving life in this world.

We all live in present circumstances, which sometimes—not always, but sometimes—are quite difficult. And we look back to God's past faithfulness, we remember the joy, the laughter that he produced, and that spills forward to future hope. I do remember, and I need to remember.

When my son Silas got this job, he's working for Masterpiece Alliance—we could not possibly be any more thrilled, more proud, more excited, more hopeful. And he's so great at it, and we're just so delighted. I need to remember that. When Max gets in a motorcycle accident and he survives, I'm like, praise the name. And I need to remember because the next time he gets in an accident, I'm going to feel like my heart's in my throat. I'm going to feel like we're done. He's probably going to get in more accidents, just frankly. I'm just kinda learning to live with that. But Lord, you've been gracious and you've been gracious. I need to remember it. I need to remember Paul coming on the team. You need to remember those things. And those things are what allow me to comfort myself when I think to the future. Lord, this is some difficult circumstance. I don't know what we're going to do. Maybe nothing because maybe we don't have any power to do anything. But you have been faithful in the past, and I think you'll be faithful in the future. These two things—gratitude and hope. Hope is the thing that does the work. Hope is the thing that warms us. But gratitude is the spark that produces the hope that gets us through this world.

When You Cannot Remember

Now, one final thought. It might be right now you're in such present pain that I can't even remember. I had no memory of my mouth ever being filled with laughter. Right? This happens. There are moments that are very dark and we just can't see it. We can't remember it. So if that's the case and looking at your story you just can't see it, I get that. But look at the bigger story because this principle is true at the grand level as well.

We're all living in an individual story, but there is a great story with this exact dynamic playing out, where gratitude produces hope. Here's how Paul puts it in Romans 8:

He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:32

What did he do in the past? He gave his son. Right? Paul likes this language:

The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God who gave himself for me. — Galatians 2:20

We remember what he has done—past tense. The cross is an accomplished work, but it gives us hope for what he's going to do. What he will do in the future is graciously give us all things.

We're in Advent season. This is what Advent is. We're living right now between what he has done—he has come, the incarnation has come, the cross has happened, the resurrection's been accomplished—and we're grateful for all that he's done, but it gives us hope for what he's gonna do. Because if he raised him from the dead, he's gonna raise you from the dead. If he has come to this earth to redeem it, then he will come to this earth and restore it. And we're living mindful of what he has done during Advent and waiting, expecting, hoping for what he will do.

What We're Going to Do

So what I want to do this morning? Every week we pray. We take a minute and we gotta pray. We're still gonna do everything that we normally do. But what we will often do is invite folks to come down and you can just talk to the Lord about anything you want. Maybe you just feel like a sense of, "Lord, I need to come and give you praise and thanks for what you've done." Maybe there's something that you're requesting and you wanna nudge that request into expectation. You can come and you can do that here. And then we're gonna sing a song while that happens, and then we're gonna reconvene and we're gonna confess. But after that, what we normally do is have a time of praise and request. And I wanna just tweak it a little bit.

We often praise God for what he is, his attributes. God, you're holy. God, you're just. God, you're wise. That's great. Those are all true. But I wanna shift it. Can we instead of praising him for what he is, let's thank him for what he's done.

Conjure. Draw to mind. Lord, we wanna thank you because you did this for me. This is your story of his faithfulness. This is his Ebenezer stone. Some of those you might articulate in ways where nobody else knows what you're talking about. I said, Lord, thank you for Paul Sites. You're like, who the heck is Paul Sites? Okay. Well, now you know, but you got your own stories. You can pray for those things. You can pray them out loud. You can pray them quiet. But let's conjure up. Lord, remind us of your faithfulness. You got, like, three minutes to get there.

And then, Lord, this is what we're asking for. This is what we're hoping that you will do. Let's frame our prayer times today in gratitude for what he's done, hope for what he will do, partly because he deserves the praise, but also partly because I think it'll be healthy for us to strengthen this muscle—to dig these grooves into your mind—that gratitude and hope will become a pattern that you use to get through present pain in this world.

Lord Jesus, we love you. You are the one. Every good thing we have is a gift from you. And so we praise you. And I pray for these dear people, would you call to mind your past faithfulness? Remind us that you came through and that you're trustworthy. And Lord, would you flood our hearts with hope and expectation for what you mean to do. We love you. Amen.