The Adverbs of the Kingdom Text: Psalm 126:4-6
Introduction: The Grammar of Gain
We live in an age that wants the harvest without the hard work of plowing. Our culture is desperate for joy, but it is a cheap joy, a hollow joy, a joy that has never known its necessary counterpart, which is sorrow. We want the laughter of the feast without the tears of the famine. We want the crown without the cross. But the economy of God does not work this way. The kingdom of God has a particular grammar, a spiritual syntax, and if we do not learn it, we will find ourselves perpetually bewildered by our circumstances and disappointed with God.
This psalm, a song of ascents, was sung by pilgrims on their way up to Jerusalem. It is a psalm that remembers a great deliverance, a eucatastrophe, to borrow a word from Tolkien. The Lord had turned the captivity of Zion, and it was like a dream. Their mouths were filled with laughter and their tongues with singing. But the psalm does not end there, basking in the glow of a past victory. It pivots from memory to petition, from celebration to supplication. The people, having tasted God's delivering power once, are now in a position to ask Him to do it again. And in doing so, they lay out for us a foundational principle of the Christian life: the immutable law of sowing and reaping.
The apostle Paul tells us in Galatians that God is not mocked; a man will reap what he sows. If you sow barley, you get barley. If you sow thistle seeds, you get thistles. That much is straightforward. But our text in Psalm 126 adds a crucial layer to this principle. It teaches us about the adverbs. While what you sow is what you reap, the way you sow is not necessarily the way you reap. The emotions that accompany the sowing are often the polar opposite of the emotions that accompany the reaping. This is the grammar of gain in God's world: no pain, no gain. The path to the shouts of joy is watered with tears.
This is a hard lesson, especially for modern Christians who have been sold a bill of goods that pictures the Christian life as a perpetual, smiling victory lap. But the Bible is a rugged book, written for people in a rugged world. It teaches us that faith is not a shield from hardship, but the necessary tool for it. And here, in these three short verses, we are given the divine pattern for all true and lasting joy.
The Text
Restore our captivity, O Yahweh,
As the streams in the Negev.
Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed,
Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, carrying his sheaves with him.
(Psalm 126:4-6 LSB)
Do It Again, Lord (v. 4)
The psalm pivots from a historical remembrance to a present plea in verse 4.
"Restore our captivity, O Yahweh, As the streams in the Negev." (Psalm 126:4)
Having recounted God's stunning deliverance in the first three verses, the people now say, in effect, "Do it again." This is the proper use of history. We look back at God's faithfulness not to build a museum, but to build an arsenal for our present prayers. They are not saying, "Wasn't that a wonderful thing God did once upon a time?" They are saying, "You are the kind of God who does that sort of thing, so do it again, right now." Our confidence in prayer is rooted in God's revealed character. He has done it before; He can do it again.
The imagery used is potent: "As the streams in the Negev." The Negev is the arid south, a desert. For most of the year, the stream beds, the wadis, are bone dry. They are dusty, sun-baked channels of rock and sand. But when the rains come, these dry beds are suddenly and violently transformed into raging torrents. A flash flood in the desert is a shocking display of power. What was barren and lifeless one moment is a mighty, rushing river the next.
This is what they are asking for. They are in a dry season. The initial euphoria of the return from exile has perhaps worn off, and the reality of rebuilding from rubble has set in. Things are hard. It feels like a spiritual drought. So they pray for a sudden, sovereign, overwhelming display of God's grace. They are not asking for a trickle; they are asking for a flood. They are asking God to interrupt their present barrenness with His liquid power. This is how we should pray when we are in our own dry places. We appeal to the God of the flash flood, the God of sudden deliverances.
The Law of Emotional Reversal (v. 5)
Verse 5 gives us the central principle, the proverb that governs the entire passage.
"Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy." (Psalm 126:5)
Here is the great reversal. Notice the sharp contrast. The sowing is done in tears. The reaping is done with shouts of joy. The action is the same in principle, you reap what you sow, but the adverb, the emotional qualifier, is flipped entirely on its head. This is a divine law. Joy does not come from avoiding sorrow; it comes through it. The joy is on the other side of the tears.
Why are there tears at the sowing? The next verse will elaborate, but we can see the principle clearly here. Sowing is an act of faith, and faith is often exercised in desperation. Imagine a farmer in a time of famine. His family is hungry. He has a small bag of seed left. This is all the grain he has. The temptation is overwhelming to eat the seed corn. Eating it provides immediate, temporary relief. Sowing it requires him to take the very thing that could keep his family alive for another week and throw it into the dirt, trusting in a harvest that is months away and not guaranteed. That is a costly act of faith. That is a sowing done in tears.
This applies to every area of the Christian life. The student who foregoes pleasure to study diligently is sowing in tears. The mother who patiently corrects her rebellious toddler for the fifteenth time in a day is sowing in tears. The man who resists a potent temptation, the pastor who prepares his sermon late into the night, the Christian who gives sacrificially when his own budget is tight, all of them are sowing in tears. It is the hard, painful, costly work of faith and obedience in the present, banking on the promise of God for the future. And the promise is this: the harvest will come, and when it does, the tears of sowing will be forgotten in the joy of reaping.
The Weeping Farmer and His Heavy Harvest (v. 6)
This final verse paints the picture for us in vivid detail, expanding on the principle from verse 5.
"He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, carrying his sheaves with him." (Psalm 126:6)
We see the farmer walking his fields, going back and forth. And he is weeping. The seed he carries is called "precious seed" in some translations. It is precious because it is all he has. Everything is riding on this. His future, his family's future, is in that bag. The load is light, a small bag of seed, but the emotional weight is immense. This is why he weeps.
But then the scene shifts. The promise is emphatic: he "shall indeed come again." The Hebrew uses a construction that means it is doubtless, certain. There is no question about the outcome. And how does he return? "With a shout of joy, carrying his sheaves with him." A sheaf is a large bundle of harvested grain. Notice the contrast in the load. He went out with a light bag of seed and a heavy heart. He returns with a light heart and a heavy load of sheaves. Harvests are heavy. It is hard work bringing in the sheaves, but it is a joyful work. The weight of the harvest is a happy burden.
This is the pattern God has set in the world. The cross precedes the crown. The death precedes the resurrection. The labor precedes the rest. The weeping precedes the joy. We see this most perfectly in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The author of Hebrews tells us that for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame (Hebrews 12:2). He was the ultimate sower who went forth weeping. He carried the precious seed of His own life to the cross, and sowed it in the ground of Golgotha. And He came again, doubtless, on the third day, with a shout of joy, and He is bringing in a great harvest of sheaves with Him, which is His people.
Our Tears, His Harvest
So what does this mean for us? It means we must learn to see our trials, our sacrifices, and our sorrows through the lens of this psalm. Your present hardship is a seed bag. Your tears are watering the ground for a future harvest you cannot yet see.
Are you struggling in your marriage? The hard work of repentance, forgiveness, and patient love is sowing in tears. But the promise is a harvest of joy. Are you pouring your life into your children, and seeing little fruit? Keep carrying that precious seed. Go forth weeping, and you will doubtless come again with rejoicing.
Is your work a grind? Is your battle with a particular sin relentless and discouraging? Is your witness for Christ met with scorn? Do not lose heart. This is the time for sowing. The farmer who eats his seed corn has a full belly for a day and an empty field for a year. We are called to be a people with a long-term vision, who are willing to exchange present comfort for future glory.
Every act of obedience performed when it is difficult is a seed sown. Every dollar given sacrificially is a seed sown. Every prayer offered in anguish is a seed sown. Every time you choose the harder right over the easier wrong, you are that weeping farmer, casting precious seed into the ground.
And the promise of God is absolute. You shall indeed come again. You will not be left in the field of your tears. The day is coming when God will turn your captivity. The flash flood of His grace will come. And you will return, not with the small bag of seed you started with, but staggering under the joyful weight of a harvest, with sheaves in your arms and shouts of joy on your lips. This is not wishful thinking. This is the sworn oath of the God who cannot lie. Therefore, do not despise the day of small things, and do not resent the tears of sowing. For in the economy of the kingdom, they are the necessary price for an eternal weight of glory.