Ascent #3 - Ascend for Joy (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the message series "Ascent" exploring Psalms 120–134. Together, we’ll reflect on the journey of rising—whether in personal growth, spiritual depth, or relational connection—embracing challenges, celebrating triumphs, and discovering deeper lessons along the way.

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Transcript

Good morning. Let's pray together. 

God, as we're gathered here today, as we so often pray, I ask that you would speak to each of us. And I ask that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and an emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. 

When's the last time you cried? My guess is that some of you would say, well, it was yesterday, it was this morning. And some of you would say, I have no idea. It has been forever since I cried. So let me ask it a different way. When's the last time that you felt so emotionally sad that you were just in a place of saying, I am just sad about something? My guess on that is we can all remember something that's a little closer than more distant. And whether there have been literal tears or figurative tears in our lives, there are things for probably all of us that bring some sadness. Maybe it's the loss of somebody, a broken relationship, a marriage that doesn't feel satisfying. Maybe you're frustrated with something in your career. There's financial hardship, there's a health challenge. But we've all had something. 

And if you're a person of faith, what makes it even harder when you have sadness is there's a little piece of us that says, I don't think it should be that way. Now, some of us might have a theology that says, it shouldn't be that way, that we should be able to have enough faith and God will solve all of our hardships. And others of us maybe have a theology that says, no, we live in a fallen world, and so God doesn't promise us that everything will be well in terms of how we define well in this world. But even if you're in that category that says, my theology sees this as being part of living in a fallen world, chances are there's still moments when you say, why would God let this happen? This doesn't seem right.  

And what is true when we come to Psalm 126, we're looking at 124, 125, 126 today, is that the topic, at least in part, is our tears. It's when we cry. It's the things we cry about. Now, the Psalms of Ascent, what we've been studying these few weeks here are Psalms that appear from Psalm 120 to 134, where there's a little title that says “Psalms of Ascent”. And the people probably sang these or recited them as they ascended toward Jerusalem in their three different festivals each year. And so these were part of their structured worship. It was something that God wanted the people to do so that they would be reminded of who God is and how to think about and worship God. And so as they made this ascent, there was this phrase that talked about, those who sow in tears will reap in joy.  

Now, years ago, I wrote in my Bible something on Psalm 126. And by the way, if you've never started writing in your Bible, it's something I'd recommend putting little notations of insights and things that God shows you over time. But I tell you that I wrote it in years ago because I don't remember where I heard it, but it wasn't original to me. But here's what I wrote in my Bible, and that is, with our tears, we can do one of three things with them. We can deny them, which is often the religious approach that says, there's no reason to cry, God's in charge, so forget about it. We can indulge them, which is often the psychological approach which says, feel it and just live in it. Or what this Psalm says we can do with our tears is we can invest them. And the reason I say invest is because it talks about sowing our tears. And if we sow our tears, then we'll reap in joy. So this is the idea of investing our tears. So those are the things that we can do with our tears. And the question in some ways is, well, then, how do I invest my tears?  

But before we get to that, I want to look at these three Psalms. And I think that each of the Psalms 124, 125, 126, gives us a different reason that we can, in a sense, have confident joy even in the midst of our tears. And so here's the first reason, and it's in Psalm 124. And that is, we can have confident joy in our tears because of how God has worked in our past.  

So here's how this Psalm reads: “If the Lord had not been on our side— [verse one] let Israel say— if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us...” 

And then as he moves forward in the next few verses, 3 through 7, we see all of these negative things that would have happened without the Lord. It says: “they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us; the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away.”

And the torrent word here is a word for a wadi, which was a stream bed, and what would happen in the desert when it rained heavily. All of a sudden, the little stream bed where people would set up kind of their lives around the water source would become a place with a raging flood. And so he's saying, without God, we would have been swept away. We would have been swallowed up by an attack. 

“Praise be to the Lord, [verse 6] who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped like a bird  from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped.” And then he says this, verse 8: “Our help...” 

If you were here a couple weeks ago, we talked about this word in Hebrew. It's the word azar. It means one who does what's needed. So, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, [he says] the Maker of heaven and earth.”

And so what he's doing is he's looking backwards and he's saying, in essence, that my help has come from God. Now, I don't know how that strikes you, but here's my guess, and that is some of us hear that and we say, oh, yeah, God has been present in my life. And you can name things and talk about specific things where you say, this is what God has done in my life. And others of us are here and we're saying, it's nice that God's done that for some other people. But for me, there are times when it feels like God has been absent. And even if I've seen him show up in some ways, there are some big ways that he hasn't been present. And maybe you even look at this and you say, well, okay, I have seen God in some ways, but not in some other ways. And so I. I don't know if that's helpful. And the reason I say that isn't because it's not helpful to look back at what God has done specifically in our lives, but it's a little bit like this. If you've had young kids, or you were ever a young kid, maybe you experienced this. When the kid doesn't want to eat the vegetables, right? And what does the parent say? Often it's, well, there are kids in other parts of the world who would love your vegetables. And what does the kids say? Well, put them in an envelope and send them to them, because I don't want to eat them right now. Because when you don't want to eat the vegetables, it's not helpful to be told that somebody else has it worse than you or that. Or that, you know, you could be a person who doesn't have vegetables.  

And sometimes when we say, well, look at what could have been if God hadn't shown up? If we still are missing something, there's a sense in which we say, it's a little bit like that, it could be worse kind of exercise that we do. You've got a friend maybe like this, who, if something is hard in your life, they're like, well, it could be worse. And they keep telling you, well, it could be worse. And I mean, the truth is, it could be worse. I mean, all of us could look at our lives and say, you know, my house, my apartment, my dorm, wherever I live. I mean, it could be worse. You could look at the car that you drive and say, well, it could be worse. You could look at the clothes you wear and say, well, it could be worse. You could look at your health and say, it could be worse. You could look at your spouse. I'm just checking to see if you're still listening. 

And the reason I point this out isn't to say that it's not helpful to look back at the past. This is what the psalmist did. But do you notice what he's ultimately driving at is not just this idea that God gave us some sporadic grace, but that God is the help, the ultimate help. And in the New Testament, where that comes into being is in this idea of being saved by the saving work of Jesus Christ. And what could have been would have been, would have been, without the work of Jesus Christ. 

Romans chapter 6, verse 23 says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life...”

What you deserve, what I deserve, what every person deserves, is spiritual death. And if it wasn't for the grace of God, what he's done in the past, then that is exactly what we would have. And the reason we can have joy even in our tears is knowing what God has done for us through the work of Jesus Christ. And that takes us out of simply saying, well, it seems like God was good in this instance, but not so good in this instance. Now, sometimes there will be moments where you say, God was amazing right there. But there are times, when maybe the hardship doesn't go away, doesn't get resolved. And ultimately God is still your helper. He's still good because of what he's done in Jesus.  

So in the past, God has worked. It's a reason to have joy in our tears. But there's also a reason to have confident joy and tears because of how God's working in our present. And this is in Psalm 125. Here, this says this very simply: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”

So again, people are ascending up to Jerusalem, the mountains. “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore.”

So as they're making this ascent and they're seeing these mountains, they're saying the Lord surrounds his people. And those who trust in the Lord, basically receive his protection. And the word trust here is the Hebrew word batach, and it means to feel secure, confident, to rely on somebody, because God is at work in the present. But as I read through this particular Psalm, what I notice next is that it doesn't mean that everything is always in accord with how people want it to be. Verse 3: “The scepter of the wicked will not remain”

What does that mean? The scepter means ruling. So the rule of the wicked will not continue. But it means that it's happening to them right now. So in the time when they're saying God surrounds us, they're also saying, there's a rule, there's a power that is pervasive. And then it says this: “then the righteous [verse 3] might use their hands to do evil.” Verse 4: “Lord, do good to those who are good, to those who are upright in heart. But those who turn to crooked ways the Lord will banish with the evildoers. Peace be on Israel.”

So the call here is to say, trust in the Lord, even though it doesn't feel like God's in charge, because he surrounds his people. And then there's this call that says, do good, Lord, to those who do good, and I don't know how that strikes you. I don't find that as comforting as I would like, at least at first, because I know that I'm not one who can say, I do good. And if you know your Bible, you know that you can't say that you do good on your own either. But also if you know your Bible, what you can say is, there's one who does good on our behalf, and it's Jesus. And so this is pointing ahead and saying, the Lord will not abandon his people, even when there's a scepter of wickedness.  

Now, this has a corporate feel, and I just want to point something out before I bring it back kind of to our own lives in this. And that is there are times when any people where they live feel like there is wickedness that is ruling. Now, I know there are some of us who are gathered who say the outgoing administration was wicked. There are some who gather who say the incoming administration is wicked. But a scepter of wickedness means where there are things that are counter to God. And here's something that I don't think is in that much debate, and that is that the age in which we live is getting increasingly harder to stand and hold to a value of things that are Biblical. And as a result, this is something to say God is still at work.  

This is an article, part of an article from a man named Jay Darrell Charles, called the Debasement of Tolerance. And he's talking about how tolerance has become a different value in our culture. Here's what he says. I'm just going to read a bit of this because it'll help us make sense of this:

“Tolerance originally denoted a policy of forbearance in the presence of something not acceptable to all. It was foremost a political virtue and, at bottom, demonstrated a government’s readiness to permit a variety of religious beliefs. John Locke argues that government should not enforce a specific religion in his Letter Concerning Toleration, [which he wrote in 1689]. Removed from its religio-political context and understanding, however, tolerance ceases to be a virtue. Indeed, it becomes a vice if and where it ceases to care for truth, ignores what is good, and disdains the values that uphold a community. emoved from its religious political context and understanding.”

See the word good there and how that's also in the text, do good to those who do good? Tolerance sometimes becomes this pervasive value, is what he's saying, where instead of insisting on the good, it says, everybody kind of live your own way.

“The culture in which Americans presently find ourselves, and one in which almost everything is tolerated.”

I actually disagree with him here, because where we're living today is not a place in which everything is tolerated, but where there's an increasing intoleration of some of the values that are in line with God's values. 

“It is a culture in which people believe nothing, possess no clear concept of right and wrong and, ultimately, are indifferent to this precarious state of affairs.” 

And he goes on basically to talk about the public and private dimensions of this idea of tolerance, and what he's driving at is he saying there are things that are pressing in on the values of faith. Now, how does that apply? You say, wait, wait, how does that, what does that have to do with my tears? Well, the affirmation in Psalm 125 is that God is for his people, even when there's a scepter of wickedness. And therefore, you don't need to fear. 

But think about how comforting even that is to say that that's true for you and me. Because where we get hopeless sometimes is we say, God, where are you in this? Where are you in my loss? Where are you in my marriage? Where are you in my health challenge? Where are you in? And we need to sometimes come back and say, God is still at work, even if I don't see it or I don't feel it, or I don't understand it. 

Philippians chapter 1, verse 6 states this very clearly in the New Testament. It says it this way: 

“...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

God continues to work. But, there's a third Psalm here, and this is Psalm 126. And I believe that this psalm basically teaches us that we can have confidence, joy in our tears because of how God will work in our future. So the context here appears to be that when the people had gone into exile and their restoration came, that God wanted them to remember this, or maybe something like it.

Verse 1: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs 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 are filled with joy.” Then Verse 4: “Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev.”

Now, remember I talked about the wadi in the wilderness. When God would restore the fortunes like the streams of Negev, what they were probably referring to is when there would be a big rain and it would wash down through the Negev, the region here, that what would happen is it would turn green almost overnight. There would be a harvest. They would say, this is amazing. We can grow things. We have water. We have life. And it was almost completely, not almost completely, it was completely something that had nothing to do with it just happened. But notice there's a second analogy here, and this is the one I alluded to earlier: 

“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”

This is a farming analogy. And so there's an analogy of God just graciously saying here, and then there's an analogy of farming and what there's a couple ways that we can misunderstand God's work in our lives. One is by saying, it's all up to me, and God doesn't do it, or to say, it's all up to God and I have no part to play. But the analogy of farming reminds us that, that there's a responsibility, and yet God is ultimately the one who is at work. And here he's talking about this in terms of joy, in terms of saying, this is how we, in a sense, invest our tears. 

Here's how Eugene Peterson writes about this in his book “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction”, which is again on these Psalms. He says:

“The Psalm does not give us...joy as a package or a formula, but there are some things it does do. It shows us the tininess of the world's joy and affirms the solidity of God's joy. It reminds us of the accelerating cost and the diminishing returns of those who pursue pleasure as a path toward joy. It repeats the promises of a God who accompanies his wandering, weeping children until they arrive home exuberant...It announces the existence of a people...who, along with whatever else is happening, are able to say at the center, we are glad.”

And the idea here is that we continue to sow our tears because there's a promise of joy.  

A year or two ago, we lost a couple trees in our yard. One was a tree that was out front that died and had to be cut down, and one got knocked over by the wind. And I had a dig that out, and then dig out the one in front. When I say I, what I mean by that is my younger sons, with my supervision. And so we got the trees gone, planted new trees, and as soon as we planted new trees, what happened was we had a dry summer. And what I found myself doing was every couple days getting two 5-gallon buckets of water and going out to these trees and dumping the water down where the trees were. And here's what was true about that. I didn't get to see the results in the time in which I was watering. I'll find out next year if it worked. 

But what I did is I kept saying, if I want these trees to live, I need to give them water today because it's so dry I'm not sure they'll live. That is the idea of sowing, investing, of saying, I can't necessarily see how this is working today, but I am going to continue to do something that I believe will have a result. And if you believe that God is going to bring joy, then there's a sense in which you can say, I can invest my tears. So the question is, how do you, how do I, invest our tears? 

Well, the first thing is we have to allow ourselves to feel and experience and grieve the things that we are sad about, the things that bring us tears. See, sometimes, especially in church context, there's an idea that says, you shouldn't be sad. You shouldn't have tears, because God doesn't need tears. But do you know Jesus wept? And there's actually a reality that your faith does not eliminate tears. In fact, it may make some of your tears more intense. Jesus himself wept tears and joy. They go together. And the deeper the tears, the deeper the potential for joy. Because what your tears are, is they are longing for things to be the way that you were created to be. 

See, in the garden, God created us for perfect community without death, without disease, to thrive. And all of our tears are a longing to have Eden restored in our lives. And so to grieve what is lost is actually to cry, because you're saying, I know that this should be different. I have a thing that I say to myself sometimes, and that is, I should not “should” my feelings until I've felt all of my feelings. Let me say that again. I should not “should” my feelings until I've felt all of my feelings. Here's what I mean by that. In the Bible, our emotions are something that we're commanded to have. We're commanded to be joyful. We're commanded to love. So sometimes people will say, my emotions are my emotions. I can't help them. Yes, you can, because you're commanded, but when you try to “should” your emotions without feeling your emotions, what will happen is you'll deny your emotions instead of saying, I have a longing that is from God. And that is why this feels broken. That is why this feels messed up. And that is why I am crying and I am sad. 

But secondly, we need to not allow ourselves to get stuck in our emotion, to wallow in it, and to say, in essence, I am a victim, and everything that is happening to me is unique and hard. It may be unique and it is hard, but when I say we don't get stuck in it, what I'm talking about is saying that this longing that I have is not intended to be the end of the story. There's something else. You see, sometimes we can be like a person at Christmas who gets a bunch of gifts and we say, that's awesome, but the gift I didn't get, that's what annoys me. And what we need to do instead is say, no. What God has done in my life doesn't make me a victim, but it makes me a student. And God is still working. And what we really need to do is say, I'm going to do what I can to repair where my tears are, but I'm ultimately going to give it to Jesus because that is where my hope is. That is where the joy comes from. And the joy may not come in this life, but those who sow in tears, we're told, will reap in joy. There is a promise from God that says you, tears, when invested, will bring joy. And we need to sit in that. 

But let me just tell you something that happened to me, a story just to see how this lives. So I had a friend in college, not a really good friend, but guy I knew okay. We had some shared activities and we lost touch right after college. Just didn't keep up right away. And then we reconnected a couple years ago. And when we reconnected, I was traveling one time, and he lived right near there, and so we got together, had had a meal, and caught up. And what I found as I heard kind of his life story in arrears at this point was that he had gotten married, had two kids, and his wife, in her early 30s, got cancer and she ended up dying, leaving him to raise these two young boys. And her death was a long, hard journey. So let me just ask you, sitting across the table from an old friend who tells you kind of their story, is it the time to say “Bible tells you to invest your tears”? Probably not, but it doesn't make it less true.  

See, some of us may be here right now, and you may be saying, I've had it so hard, I don't want to hear about investing my tears. And I understand that. But the issue is, your choices are to deny your tears, to indulge them, or to say, I'm going to let these tears lead to greater joy, which means the fulfillment of the desires that have been thwarted here, maybe in the next life, maybe in this life, but that is what I'm going to hold to.  

And I would say for some of us who are maybe gathered here today who are saying, you know, I just want God to help fix what I'm feeling right now. I've put it like this before, but I think it's worth repeating. And that is, if you are not a person of faith, what this means is that your best things now are as close to heaven as you will ever be, and your bad things will only get worse. And if you're a person of faith, a person who has followed Jesus Christ, what it means is that your worst things now are as close to hell as you will ever be. And your best things are just a foretaste of what is to come. Yeah, thank you. That is why we can sow now, we will reap in joy. 

So let me ask you just to bow your heads, close your eyes for a moment. I just want to pray for some of the situations that are likely represented here today. So would you pray with me? And just for a moment, I just want to ask you, what is it that causes tears for you right now?Can you just figuratively take that and say, God, I want to invest those tears.  

Today there are some, I'm sure, who are here who are having great physical challenges. You've had a loss of a loved one, maybe recently, maybe in the distant past, that it just feels like you can never get past it. You're in a marriage that you feel unfulfilled in and trapped in, or you're struggling with something with your kids or your parents, or there's an addiction issue. There's a sadness around your career. Maybe your finances are broken. And you're saying, I feel so hopeless. And the message today is there is hope. Because you can look back and say, God has worked in my past. God is working today. And praise God, he will work in the future and bring joy from the tears. And if you're a follower of Jesus, you can hang to that. If you're not a follower of Jesus, maybe today is just your day to say, God, I want to know that my future joy is greater than my present joy. And you can trust in Jesus as your Savior today and say, now I know that God has saved me, he's working, and he will work. God, we thank you that the psalms that were written thousands of years ago that you superintended for people in the covenant community to experience speak so clearly to our emotions even today. And I pray that the affirmations that you asked that group of people to make, are affirmations we could make, and they would help us on our journey to follow you and to orient our lives towards you. And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Thanks for being here. Have a great week. 

This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse errors.