21 Sep Meditations on the Psalms #292
Psalm 126 part 3
The Bible is so accurate, so faithful to life. It doesn’t give us a rosy, false picture of what life is like. It shows us both the dark and the light, the evil and the good, the hard and the enjoyable, the bitter and the sweet. If you are feeling discouraged, then this psalm is for you.
Ps126 divides itself into a narrative (vs1-2), a song (v:3), a prayer (v4), and a promise (vs5-6). The promise is this: Present distress must not be viewed as if it would last forever; it is not the end, by any means, but only a means to the end. If sorrow is our sowing, rejoicing shall be our reaping. If there were no sowing in tears there would be no reaping in joy. Our mouth can never be filled with ‘joyful shouting’ if it had not been first filled with the bitterness of grief or captivity. We must sow: we may have to sow in the weary wet weather of sorrow, but we shall reap in the sunny summer season of joy. Let us keep to the work of this present sowing time, and find strength in the promise which is here so positively given to us. Here is one of the Lord’s ‘shalls and wills;’ in due season you shall reap!
An Israelite would have understood the sowing and harvest time – they had festival Sabbaths to commemorate it. At the time of the Passover Jesus went forth weeping, ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,’ bearing precious seed and sowing it around him, till at length His body was buried in the tomb, like a grain of wheat in the furrow of the grave. But He arose, and is now in heaven! At Pentecost there was rejoicing (Luke15:7,10,32) as the harvest began – thousands baptised in a day, and that was just the beginning! Then the finale – the resurrection, of which immersion baptism is a metaphor. And then He shall come ‘with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God and the dead in Christ shall rise,” (1Thess.4:16) ‘His harvest sheaves.’ The harvest is over! The party begins (Rev19:9)!
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