Word of Salvation – January 2026
FILLED WITH JOY!
Sermon by John Haverland
Readings: Philippians 1:12-19; 4:4-13
Text: Psalm 126
Call to worship: Psalm 66:1-4
Theme: Remembering God’s great restoration in the past prompts God’s people to pray for his blessings in the future.
Purpose: To urge you to rejoice in the great work of God in Christ in the past and to pray for his blessing in the future.
Life is full of changes. There are times when everything is going smoothly and well, but then suddenly everything seems to go wrong!
Or there are times when we are really down in the dumps and burdened by many troubles and trials, and then we climb out of all that and get a new perspective on life!
This is true for all of us: there are times of difficulty, sadness and sorrow;
but there are also time of gladness, blessing and joy!
This is where the Bible is true to life because it is full of accounts of other people who were just like us.
The Bible is an honest account of their joys and sorrows, their times of happiness and their times of sadness.
This is especially true of the psalms. Much of the Bible is about God speaking to his people; but the Psalms are the record of God’s people speaking to him.
This psalm is about people like us; people who had been through trouble, but were restored, delivered out of that, and were filled with joy at what God had done for them!
This is a psalm of joy and praise and thanksgiving. It was a psalm for the people of Israel in their time, and it is a fitting psalm for us in these times.
It recalls God’s great acts of deliverance in the past and is a prayer for his ongoing blessings for the future. This is the theme for this sermon.
The people of Israel offered
- Thanksgiving for the past, and they
- Prayed for the future
- THANKSGIVING FOR THE PAST
a) v 1 reads, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion…” (ESV; NIV 2011)
This could refer to the return of some of the people of Israel to their own land in 537 BC after 70 years of exile in Babylon. But it could also refer to a general deliverance.
The people of Israel had been rescued from some terrible calamity – this may have been a siege, or a famine, or a plague, or war. We are not sure.
We do know they had been restored. The same Hebrew word for “restore” is used of the restoration of Job’s fortunes after his great losses and terrible sickness.
b) What God had done for them was so good that “we were like those who dream!” It was almost too good to be true! They thought they might wake up and find they had only been dreaming. But it was true! It was real! It had indeed happened!
Their joy was so great they could hardly speak; they could only laugh; “our mouth was filled with laughter…”
Some years ago a young girl, Cleo Smith, was missing in Western Australia for 18 days. Then the police found her. There were tears of joy from her mother, from the detectives, and from the police commissioner, and many others!
c) The people of Israel not only laughed but they also responded in song – “Our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” (v 2)
Psalm 66, our call to worship, called us to “Shout with joy to God all the earth! Sing the glory of his name, make his praise glorious.”
The word ‘joy’ is repeated four times in Psalm 126, and the call to shout and sing and rejoice in the Lord appears over and over in the Scriptures.
We need to do this as New Testament Christians; in fact, we have even more reason to do so because God has rescued us through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
He has shown us his love and compassion in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. We too want to shout for joy to the Lord; we too want to express our thanksgiving in psalms and hymns. We want to give God glory for the things he has done.
This is the blessing of coming together to worship the Lord, morning and in the late afternoon, to sing our psalms and hymns and songs in praise to our great God for our salvation through his Son, Jesus Christ!
d) What God had done was recognised by the nations.
They had seen what God had done for his people Israel in rescuing them: “They said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them!’” (v 2b). God delivered his people Israel so the other nations would see his goodness and greatness and give him all the glory for these “great things”.
We see this testimony to the nations again and again through the Old Testament.
Moses pleaded that God would not destroy his people so that God’s name would be not be dishonoured by the Egyptians (Ex 32:12).
Moses urged Israel to keep God’s laws so that the other nations would see what a great God the people of Israel had (Deut 4:6ff).
Through Ezekiel God promised his exiled people that he would restore them to their land so that his name would be honoured. (Ezekiel 20:44)
The glory and the praise must always to go to God.
This happened in the time of the early church after Pentecost: those Christians “ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.” (Acts 2:47)
This also happens when a person is converted and his unbelieving family and friends notice the changes that have taken place in him or her.
Let’s pray that the Lord will do great things for the church in New Zealand so that the people of this nation will say, “The Lord has done great things for them!”
e) What was only observed by the nations was actually experienced by Israel.
They recognised what God had done for them;
“The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad!” (v 3)
The Lord had rescued them, delivered them, brought them home, saved them and blessed them.
This is true for us today as God’s people.
We were dead in our sin but God made us alive in Christ.
We were slaves to Satan but the Lord set us free to serve him. We were lost and he found us. We were far away from the Lord God but he brought us home.
In response we too can say; “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad!”
We do what the apostle Paul urged on the believers in Philippi; “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (4:4)
This is a deep seated joy, a lasting peace and an eternal happiness.
- The people of Israel expressed their thanksgiving for the past and THEY PRAYED FOR THE FUTURE. This is the second part of this psalm.
The verbs in v 1-3 are all in the past tense, whereas the verbs in v 4-6 are in the future tense.
The people of Israel looked back with thankfulness to God, but they also looked forward and prayed for God’s help.
a) “Restore our fortunes, O Lord”
As we have seen, this psalm may refer to the return of the people of Judah from their exile in Babylon.
About 50,000 had returned home but many Jews remained in Babylon.
Those in Jerusalem prayed that the Lord might send more of their people to help them. “O Lord, bring more home to our land.”
They also needed God’s blessing on the work they were doing.
They faced the massive task of restoring a city that had been completely destroyed.
They had to rebuild the temple, and their homes, and the city walls.
The city water supply needed to be restored.
In the face of these difficulties they prayed;
“Restore our fortunes, O Lord.”
We face our own difficulties of living in a society that is unbelieving, humanistic and increasingly pagan.
Most of the population ignore God and the Bible.
Separation and divorce and family breakdown are common. Every year about 600 people commit suicide.
In this situation we too need to pray; “Restore our fortunes, O Lord.”
We need to go to the Lord in prayer because only he can help us, only he can turn this situation around, only he can reform the church and revive the people of our land.
The psalm then uses two pictures of this restoration they were seeking; the first is sudden and the second is slow.
b) “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb.”
The word “Negeb” means dry or parched – a land without water. It refers to the southernmost part of Judah that extended down towards the Sinai Peninsula.
That desert region was usually very dry.
But heavy rains would turn empty riverbeds into fast flowing streams, and would transform a dry and desolate desert into a colourful spectacle of grass and flowers.
The people of Israel prayed that the Lord would restore their fortunes like this – may God’s blessings be like heavy rain pouring water over their land.
This is what we pray for:
that the Lord would be gracious to us and bless us; that the church of Christ might grow and increase;
that he might give us his showers of blessing. “Restore our fortunes O Lord like streams in the Negeb.”
c) The other picture this psalm uses is an agricultural one, so this is a slow picture: verses 5-6:
“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.”
Farming requires long hours of hard work. Farmers face the problems caused by too little water in times of drought, or too much water causing flooding. They have to deal with hail and disease that can destroy crops.
Modern farmers have the benefit of machinery, ploughs, harvesters, and hay bailers. But the people of Israel had no machinery. Working on their farms was back-breaking labour and they “sowed in tears” (v 5).
We can picture them, because of the immense difficulty of the work, going out “weeping, carrying seed to sow” (v 6).
Yet they believed that God would bless their efforts. They sowed in tears but expected to “reap with shouts of joy.” A farmer went our weeping but anticipated he would “come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”
They put their hope in God. They expected God would answer their prayers and prosper their work.
We need to pray that God will bless our efforts in the church and kingdom of Christ.
We too face many difficulties in our situation.
The work of witnessing and evangelism is difficult.
At present we are preparing the ground and sowing the seed.
We don’t see much return on our work, although there are sometimes a few hopeful signs of God’s grace.
Even though this is hard work we must keep at it and keep praying for it.
We must keep living out our faith, doing good works, and speaking about the Lord Jesus as and when we have opportunity.
The Lord will bless this work.
All whom God has chosen will come to faith.
But the hope expressed in verses 4-6 applies much more broadly than evangelism.
Here is a prayer for all who are parents seeking to raise our children in God’s truth and ways, for all involved in Christian schools as members of boards and as teachers, for parents teaching your children a home, for all who are teaching in public schools seeking to be a salt and a light, for you who will teach Sunday school and catechism classes and cadets, for pastors in our preaching and teaching, for elders and deacons doing their faithful work, for missionaries proclaiming the good news about Jesus in other places, and for all of us as a church seeking to obey God in this city and region.
We are living in uncertain times.
No one can predict the future and we don’t know what this year, or the coming years, will bring.
However, like the psalmist, we can look back over the past with thanksgiving.
We are grateful for all the blessings God has given to us as Christians living in this New Testament age.
We thank the Lord for sustaining us in health and strength, and for work to do.
May He give us patience and perseverance, faith and trust, love and kindness for those around us,
and health and strength for all we do in His Name.
May God restore our fortunes, may he enable us to worship with joy and gladness, may he pour out his blessings on us, like streams in the Negeb.
May we sow the seed of the good news about Jesus and reap a great harvest from this.
As we carry out seed to sow, sometimes with tears, may we “reap with songs of joy.”
And may our blessings from God be so abundant, so generous that we have to gather them up in our arms!
Amen