Well, let's get to our message. We're looking at the Psalms of Ascent. This is found in Psalm 126. That's the text we'll be looking at today, but the Psalms of Ascent, 120 to 134. And the literal word ascent means to go up. So the Lord was calling his people as they sang these songs to go up, to go to a higher place. And as a matter of fact, inside the church, this is our calling. You know, the moniker of this church is where eagles go to fly, but this whole understanding is that God is taking us on a journey, but there are plateaus in which we get to a certain place and he calls us up here and then calls us up here and calls us up here, and so we're always going higher. Oswald Chamber talks about The state of mind, I have to read it up here, it's too small there. A higher state of mind and spiritual vision can only be achieved through a higher practice of personal character. Up to the highest and best that you know that in the outer levels of your life, God will say to you, friend, come even higher. In other words, God develops our character and when we get to a certain place in our character, then we are able to go higher with him. Does that make sense? Develops you, then reveals to you something that he wants. Chambers goes on to talk about that in Abraham's life, there was a point where God developed him and then took him and showed him something that was very important. I can say the genesis of this church was birthed, I was minding my own business, I was in South Jersey, I was pastoring a church, I preached a message and I'm coming down off the pulpit and I hear the Lord say to me, come up here, I wanna show you something. And I knew it was something important, so I set aside a day or two to fast and pray. And during that day or two, the Lord said, I want you to start a church. I want you to call it River Mountain Church. I want it to have about 70 people. And he went on and on and on to explain this to me. And there were certain elements of that. And I have the exact date. When he spoke to me, it was a Sunday, May 21st, 2006. And then that Tuesday, he revealed to me what he brought me up to show me. And in the five years prior, God was developing my character. I'm convinced that there's no way God could have showed me any of this stuff unless he had done a work in me for five years. Does it make sense? God does a work and then he reveals something and then you get it and then at some point he'll say come up higher, I want to show you something else and then you go a little higher. That by the way is the actual piece of paper. It was a PDA but I took dictation on that day. I've called you to an apostolic ministry to the body. And he gave me the word Eagle Rock, which I had no idea what that was, and Diamond Rock. And if you see down there, he instructed a few things to have. And even though over the years I have forgotten these things, matter of fact, it took 16 years of this church to be in existence before we started the School of Theology. Notice that. School of Theology was one of the initial things that we were to do as a church. And to be perfectly honest with you, when this came back to my mind about a year ago, to have the School of Theology, I had totally forgotten that it was here. Isn't it amazing? See, inside the church, who leads the church? Is it somebody as feeble-minded as myself? No. No, it's the Holy Spirit who leads the church. And He does kind of what Jesus is instructing, and it comes down the line, but we are just kind of recipients of the vision of what God wants to do upon the earth. And when we get to the Psalms, we see that they are exclusively used in the assembly for elevation. As a matter of fact, the Psalms are mentioned 414 times in the New Testament. Here's one. This is 1 Corinthians 14. How then, brothers, when you come together? That's speaking about a church service. Everyone has a psalm, so there's the psalms in the church, right? And then we go to Ephesians, and it says we're to speak to one another in psalms and hymns. So there again, there's the psalms being used again. And then in Colossians, it says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms. It's important to use psalms, apparently. There's something in the psalms that elevate us. And when Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, was at his darkest hour. The Bible says that what he did is he sang a hymn, but the hymn actually was in reference to a halas, a psalm that he sang. So the psalms are always part of our worship. And so let's look at this one because God intends it to be part of our worship. It says, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouths was filled with laughter, and our tongues 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. We are glad. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the streams of Nimigd. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing seeds for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. So Heavenly Father, we pray not only that this word would be effectual upon our ears, Lord, we pray that the Holy Spirit would take it and incorporate it into our lives in such a way that we will live out these Psalms and we will elevate ourselves the way you intend us to be elevated through the Spirit that wrote these wonderful words. Apply them to our life in Jesus' name. Amen. So I'm calling this message, The Joy of the Restored Life. Do you all like to be restored? Have you all had years of your life in which the enemy came and took away stuff? Maybe it was your own disobedience that brought it about. But I'm here to tell you that God wants to restore everything in your life. There is a joy that comes from restoration. So if my first point is this, restoration as a source of our joy. God takes great delight in restoring to us everything. And we'll see that as we go through the songs. It says, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. In other words, the restoration was so great that it seemed like a dream. You ever have an event in your life that is so joyous that it doesn't even seem real? It seems like a dream. It says, then our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy. You need to know this, that we were created for joy. Matter of fact, our end of our life is going to be joy. It's not going to be pain. It's not going to be suffering. It's not going to be torment. It's not going to be struggles. It's going to be joy for all eternity. We were created for joy. Therefore, man is always looking for the joy in which he was created for. G.K. Chesterton, the Catholic theologian, says every man who knocks on the door of a brothel or the brothel's door is really knocking for God. Now it sounds radical, doesn't it? But it's speaking to our human heart, wanting ecstasy, wanting joy. We're looking for it. In the Westminster Catechism, which is used by the reformers to teach the children about what's the point of all of this? Why are we all here? What is the chief end of man? And in this catechism, it says what is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and then to enjoy him forever. Do you know you'll be enjoying God forever? The emphasis is on the joy that we experience with God. John Piper, one of my favorite Baptist ministers, had this wonderful quote that he got from studying the works of Jonathan Edwards, the greatest American theologian. He says, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied with him. Do you know what this is about? When God is my all in all, when God is my everything, when there is nothing that is good in this life except God, and I'm most satisfied with that, then God is most glorified. If I go chasing after things, then God says, hey, what about me? Ain't I good enough? Do you understand this? The psalmist would get to a place where he would say something like this, I say to the Lord, you are my Lord. Listen, apart from you, I have no good thing. There's no such thing as anything good apart from God. All my good comes from my relationship with God and the things he brings into my life that are good. Restoration should be so surreal, it should be like a dream to us. I don't know about you, but as a child, I don't think I had a happy childhood really. And occasionally the Lord would give me dreams. And I was just like seven, eight, nine. I knew this was like something God was doing. And I would get these beautiful dreams of heavenly places. And maybe because I was a young child, he gave me this dream that was like an amusement park. And when I looked at this amusement park in my dream, it seemed like heaven. There were wooded trees and roller coasters. As a matter of fact, the one thing I really remember in this dream that I had when I was about 7, 8, and 10, there was a stream that ran across the park in front of the park. And behind there, there were all these trees and rides. And I remember even, I want to go there. God, I want that. And I would wake up and I would, it was so vivid that for the rest of my life, I remember this dream. And every place we would go on vacation, I would wonder if we would see it. Does anybody know what I'm showing up here? And so when my wife got called up here and we were excited about being up here, we thought, you know, and so we said, oh, you got to go to Knoebel's. And we went to Knoebel's and it was like a twilight. And that's when I was dreaming of it, it was like a twilight. And I was like, I looked at my wife, I've been here before in my dream. And it felt surreal as I was walking around. I was like, wow, God, this was part of my destiny and I didn't know it. Do you believe God does that stuff? Absolutely. So thank God for Kenobos. It was started by a minister, by the way, Kenobos. Go back and look at the history of it. Restoration is all about recovering what is lost. And as a matter of fact, when God wants to emphasize joy, he'll always say, you know, there was a lost coin, or there was a lost child, or there was a lost, something was lost, and then it got restored. So God, it's like God takes this pleasure of taking something old, beat up, destroyed, and he wants to restore it back to its original condition. And there's great delight in taking this old beat-up chair and making it what it used to be. And do you know God does that with us? I am a firm believer that God is trying to restore the Garden of Eden. As a matter of fact, heaven is an extension of Eden and the paradise that we were created to walk with God in the cool of the day. And all of our life is sort of like moving toward that point. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those in a dream. Then our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy. There is something more joyous about, you know, I have a nice watch here. It's a very nice watch. And I take it for granted. You know, it's just a nice watch. But if I lose this thing, right, I'll spend a lot of time and effort looking for it. And when I find it, guess what? It'll be a pretty exciting day. And so God is almost like in our lives, there's things that are taken away, but if we take them for granted, and then, it's like yesterday, right? Wasn't yesterday a nice day? Walking around in our shorts and our t-shirts. Do you know the people in Florida, they couldn't appreciate a day like that. It's just another day. To us, it's like, whoa! That's why we live up here for those. They have no appreciation. Oh, yes, you do. Oh, in Florida. We won't go in the Florida discussion too much. Don't rob us of our only joy. The joy is we go through this horrible spring and then we get to the end and it's like, yes. So that's our restoration of joy. Restoration is for all to see and for all to praise. This is one of the most interesting points. Listen to what it says here. The Lord has done great things for them. The psalmist is quoting others who are looking at Israel, looking at the restoration, and saying, these are the nations. They look at it and they go, wow, wow. The Lord has done some really great things for those people. Do you all believe that? That God would actually Take a group of people. Remember Babel? That's where he divided all of the nations and all of the different people groups and all these different places in the world. And they were dispersed. According to Deuteronomy 32, it seemed like there were different gods that were in different places. And these people worshiped various gods. Here's a list of some of the gods that are mentioned in the Old Testament. You know, there's Baal was mentioned. Beelzebub was mentioned. Moloch, we know one of the prominent wicked gods of the people. And so you have all these nations and all these different gods, and God chooses a little group of people called the Israelites, and he says, now watch what I'm gonna do with these people. And all the other nations are to watch the blessing that God pours out upon those people. So the question is, did God want to bless Israel to make other nations jealous? And the answer to that question is yes. As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul, when he talks about the Christians coming to the fullness of understanding of their Messiah, he says, I magnify my ministry in order that somehow my fellow Jews would become jealous that I might save them. Yeah, God's up in heaven saying, watch the blessings I pour. Do you think America has been blessed? Do you think America was blessed because of its Christian foundation? Do you think all the other nations of the world went, whoa, whoa? They built it upon Judeo-Christian values and look at what it became. All other nations. So let me say this. Is the success and failure of a nation related to the nation's deity? Answer to the question, the simple answer is yes, of course. you worship our false gods, there will be a payment to pay. Matter of fact, we follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's the God we follow. In Ezekiel, it talks about all the nations, it says here, the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God. when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. The idea is that God would take a group of people and do amazing things with them and all the other nations would look and ponder the goodness of God. But also, when that nation disobeyed their God, guess what their God would do? He would bring pestilence upon them. He would bring famine upon them until they returned. But make no mistake about it, it is God's intention to bless us in such a way that all the Gentiles or all the peoples of the world look at us and go, wow. Here's a scripture in Matthew. This is Matthew 6, 32 and 33. For the Gentiles seek after these things, meaning all Gentiles seek after certain material things in life. But your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But he says, but seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. And what does the rest of this say? and all these things that the Gentiles are seeking after, I'm just going to give them to you. Now let me say this about God. He's a very generous God. Because if I was writing this text, I would not have included that last verse. I would have just said, hey, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and I would have put a period there, and I would say, do it! Because if you think, oh, if I do this, then I'm going to miss out on that, then maybe I'll do this so that I'll get this and that. Right? I'll do something to get something. And there's a whole camp, there's a prosperity camp, which is on the wrong side of God's word, and there's a whole other camp that's also on the wrong side that says you shouldn't do stuff to get stuff. Have you read the Bible? You cannot argue with me that there's not a blessing that comes from obedience. Every time God says, if you do this, I'll do that, including this. Seek first my kingdom and its righteousness, and I'll give you everything the Gentiles are seeking after. See, God, when he wants to drive this point home, oh, thank heaven for 7-Eleven, he says, if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask? My God is better than any parent, better than any God. He is my Father who loves me in heaven, who gives good things. Restoration can also be sudden and abundant. That's what the psalmist is talking about. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the streams of Nagib. Does anybody know what he means by that? Has any of you ever been to the streams of Nagib? Thank God for Bible commentaries. Thank God for people who are involved in exploring as archaeologists these various areas. If you went to this desert region of Hebron, you would see Nagab there, and you would see these gullies in these dry places that are just empty ditches. But if God sends rain to the desert, guess where all the water goes? It goes right into those ditches and it just flows and it becomes something like this. It's quick, it's sudden, it goes from dry to like this. God just says, let me just give three hours of rain and boom, you'll have streams in the desert. And that's what they're praying. May our restoration be like those streams. Lord, may you just restore us quickly. And by the way, we will appreciate it because we're in a desert. This is a beautiful place to experience if it's in Pennsylvania, but it's a really beautiful place to experience if you're in Death Valley in California, right? So, make our restoration extreme, literally. Okay. This is very similar to what Isaiah the prophet says. Behold, I'm doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? Listen, I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. When God does something new, many times it's like boom. It's like quick. It happens like a stream in the wilderness. And finally, restoration many times begins with tears and ends with joy. Do you understand this principle? What are the tears speaking about? It's speaking really more about repentance. Remember, these Israelites had been away from God and now their eyes are open and they're returning to God. And as they return to God in sackcloth and ashes, as they return to God in their tears, they know that when God has fully restored them, they are going to be full of joy. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seeds for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy. This is the tears of repentance and returning to God. Notice the contrast between the prodigal and what he was experiencing to when he came home. Do you see the contrast there? God is trying to set a contrast. As bad as it was, this is how good it's gonna be plus more. Do we see that in the scripture? Of course! Listen to this. I will give you what? Beauty in replace of what? Ashes. They would repent in sackcloth and ashes, and when they repented in sackcloth and ashes, God says, I'm going to give you beauty for that. You're mourning, you're broken, you're contrite. I'm going to give you the oil of gladness. Your spirit is faint, you don't feel you can go on any further, you feel like quitting, you want to give up. Well, I'm going to give you a garment of praise. Why? That they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that God might be glorified. God is glorified in us when we have been totally restored to Him and we become totally righteous. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied with Him and when we are filled with His goodness. One other little verse is tagged on here that you probably are very familiar with. It's all about bringing in the sheaves. They shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing in the sheaves. How many people know the song? Bringing in the sheaves, we shall go rejoicing. Bringing in the sheaves. How many of you Americans know what a sheave is? I don't know, but I'm bringing it in. Bringing in those sheaves. Some of the farmers know. The sheaves were these bundles of wheat or hay, and it was really a symbol of abundance. Yeah, we cried, we mourned, we wept, but now God says, okay, now it's time to rejoice. Go read Nehemiah. Go read the restoration of God's people, Nehemiah. They read the word of God, they're all crying, they're all repenting, and the Lord says, stop it! Go home, crack out the wine, crack out the fatted calf, it's a holy day. Go read it. I should have put it up here, actually. We get the idea of a holiday from a holy day, and a holy day is a day of celebration, and we celebrate. Why? Because we get it. We've repented. We've come home. The prodigal gets a party. Why? Because he was lost and now he's found, so he gets a party. The children of Israel, because they were lost and now they're coming back, they get sheaves. It's a party. Restoration is always about a party. It's always about a fortune. And God went through great lengths to get them to the party because they were so far from God, God could not bless them. And so you know what God did in his love and his compassion and his mercy? He sent locusts. Do you know God will send locusts into your life to eat up everything around you until you get the point? Matter of fact, the Bible actually says in Joel, it says, it was I who sent the great destroying army against you. I sent that army to destroy you. Y'all say amen. See, if you wander far from God and God just lets you go, he doesn't love you. He'll send you messages. You don't get the message. You keep going farther and farther. God says, bring in the army. Destroy everything they've got. Because maybe then they'll get the message. But here's the part that is so incredible about God. This is what Joel says, the context. The Lord says, I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, to the hopping locusts, to the stripping locusts, to the cutting locusts. I had all kinds of locusts and I sent them all. And they destroyed everything. And you came back to me. And now you're, listen, not only am I going to bless you from this day forward because you've returned to me, I'm going to look back over all those years in which you were disobedient to me. All those years that those locusts took all that stuff away when you were walking in blatant sin. All those years you lost out on my blessing. I'm going to take all those blessings I could have given you and I'm going to bring them over here and dump them on you here. Is that a good God or what? I'm going to restore to you those blessings that you lost when I was punishing you. So you mean God's blessings are retroactive. It's one thing to get a bonus at work, right? You get a bonus, a couple thousand dollars, and the employer says, here's your bonus, a couple thousand dollars. By the way, I'm going to make this retroactive for the last 10 years. I should have been giving you these bonuses before, but I wasn't. So now I'm going to give you retroactive bonuses. This is God. My restoration of you is gonna be so complete and so thorough, it's gonna seem like a dream. You ever hear people say, I'm living the dream? You don't know what the dream is. We know what the dream is. God has placed in our heart eternity. We know what the dream is. And God gives us the restoration in his time. It is complete and it is total. And it is abundant joy. A lot of you are going like, I wish I had that. I really do. I mean, you know. Well, let me give you the prayerful takeaways today. First, God wants to restore you, and he also wants to restore your joy. Restore unto me, David prayed, the joy of my salvation. Yeah, he wants to give you joy. God, His restoration is sudden and abundant. It will come upon you quickly. God's restoration will be retroactive in most cases. But here's what you need to know. Restoration begins with repentance. You want all of this? Are you totally and completely obedient to God in every aspect of your life right now? Thanks for listening to this message from River Mountain Church. Would you like some more information? Visit our website, rivermountainchurch.org.