Brown's Daily Word 11-29-07

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for the wonderful Advent Season which we are about to enter. It is a wonderful blessing to end the year through Advent Season at Christmas, and then to enter the new year following the Star of Bethlehem. Praise the Lord for the way our Lord, who is mighty and merciful, has orchestrated the wonderful plan of redemption and demonstrated that great love through Christmas in sending His own Son, Jesus.
The reading for the first Sunday of Advent is from Isaiah 2. It is an invitation that reads, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord." It is the Lord's desire and design for all of us that the Advent and Christmas Season should be a high moment in our lives. It is my prayer that somehow the Lord would lift us from the valleys of life and place our feet upon His mountain, where we may behold His glory and catch a glimpse of His majesty and splendor. Psalm 126 is one of 15 psalms grouped together in the Psalter which all bear the designation “a psalm of ascents.” The word “ascents” is a noun form of a verb meaning “to go up,” and it alludes to the idea of “going up to Jerusalem,” since you approached Jerusalem from lower countryside. You never went DOWN to Jerusalem, you always went UP to Jerusalem. And, according the Law of Moses, all the men of Israel were to go up to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate the feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. There was a hymnody for these festal seasons, just as we have hymns for Christmas. And, they were the “going up psalms,” the psalms you sang when you were in caravans, traveling across Israel or Judea toward Jerusalem. So, Psalm 126 is one of those going-up psalms, and it clearly dates from after the time when Israel went into the Babylonian Captivity. In fact, it is looks back in time to that event.

The first advent mentioned in Psalm 126 is contained in the first three verses. It was the advent of God’s promises of redemption. Those promises were just about all the people had left of their religious heritage as they were held in slavery in Babylon. Their was no temple worship. There was, most likely, next to no worship at all. During those 70 years, those who remembered Jerusalem told their children about a land the children had never seen. Jerusalem was no more real to the children of the exile than a fable, or a story of the past. The only thing left to them was God’s promise to redeem his people out of slavery and to restore them to their home and to restore them to His worship.

That event is what opens the words of Psalm 126. “1 When the LORD brought back the captivity of Zion, We were like those who dream.”
“Then they said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’ “ And, so, finally the reality of the Lord’s blessing on them ceases to feel like a dream, and instead becomes a dream come true, so that they confess “ 3 The LORD indeed has done great things for us, and we are glad.”

Now this Psalm has the same quality as so many of our Christmas carols: it looks back at a previous, glorious advent of God’s blessing. And, it also looks forward to a fuller, more complete and decisive advent of God’s redemption. That looking forward to a second advent is contained in verse 4:

“ 4 Bring back our captivity, O LORD, as the streams in the South.”

What’s this all about? After recounting their joy when God brought back the captivity of Zion, why are they asking God to do the same thing again? The singers of the Psalm, as they would go up to Jerusalem for the feasts, would look backward at the time when God began his promised redemption; and at the same time they looked forward the time when that redemption would be complete.

Indeed, the metaphor used in this Psalm indicates that they had some sort of idea what the second advent would look like when it arrived. The “streams of the south” are desert lands. Except for their being topographical features of the desert, they look no different that the rest of the desert on higher ground. It’s all dirt, rocks, and scattered scrubby cactus and thorn bushes. That is, until the rain comes. And, suddenly the desert blooms. What was formerly arid and uniformly tan and grey in color is now wet and filled with blossoms everywhere. Green shoots are pushing themselves out of the ground at every place. That is the KIND of thing that the singers of this psalm are looking forward to – a completion of God’s redemption in the future which results in something lush, riotously luxuriant, and fabulously rich with color and life.
And, the opening words of Psalm 126 have become for Christians one of the most fitting exclamations of their understanding of what God did in sending his Son into the world to die for sinners. And, what began solely in the song of Mary is now sung by millions upon millions of the redeemed around the world this time of year – and it joins the voices of those who sang Psalm 126 for centuries before Christ was born – when God brought back the captivity of Zion, when God entered the world to redeem it from sin and death, we were like those who dreamed. The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad!”
But, just as the singers of Psalm 126 looked forward to a second advent of God’s redemption, one that would be like a desert exploding into blossom, so too do Christians at the season of advent look forward to the second advent, when Jesus shall make all things new. “ For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing, and her people a joy. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in My people; the voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her, nor the voice of crying.”
This is not the only prophecy of the new heavens and earth in Scripture, of course. But, it is one of the more familiar. The mention of the lamb and wolf dwelling together, or the lion eating grass like an ox – surely this has a dream-like quality about it.
And, meanwhile, here we are, between these two advents – the one where God first came into the world as a man, and the one where that man, Jesus Christ, will return back to the earth with glory and slendour.
5 Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. 6 He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

The time between the advents, according to this Psalm, is marked by two features. One of them is sorrow, weeping, and tears. The path between the First Advent and the Second Advent is a time of sowing seed, and that process we are told is a sorrowful one. It is costly and that costliness is painful.

But all these sorrowful things are like seed sown in the ground. Those who sow such things shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. We know that our Lord, kept all his promises concerning the first advent. He will most certainly keep all his promises concerning the second advent.
Standing on His promises.
Brown