From Baca to Beracha, Part 1

Greetings, friends and new listeners. Welcome to The Sound of Faith.

I'm Sharon Notz thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Our message today is for all who have ever experienced the Valley of Tears, a place where it seems all blessings are cut off or lost. It's entitled, From Baka to Baraka. God wants to take you from Baka, the Valley of Tears, to Baraka, the Valley of Blessings, and turn your tears into triumph. I preach this message by personal experience, so I'm excited to tell you how to get from Baka to Baraka.

Amen. I have a word from the Lord this morning, and I want to go right into the Word of God. If you have your Bibles with me, let's turn to the book of Judges, the second chapter.

I want to minister this morning on the subject, From Baka to Baraka. We're going to go from the Valley of Tears to the Valley of Triumph, and we're going to begin in Judges, the second chapter, reading verses one through five. An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bokeen and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt and have brought you into the land, which I swear under your fathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you. That's my part.

This is your part. And you shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land. You shall throw down their altars, but we have not obeyed my voice.

Why have you done this? Wherefore, I also said, I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. And it came to pass when the angel of the Lord spake these words into all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept, and they called the name of that place Bokeen, and they sacrificed there unto the Lord.

Now we have here where the angel of God has come to the people of Israel. This is after the time of Joshua, because the Bible declares that during the lifetime of Joshua and all of his counterparts, that the people of Israel obeyed the Lord and did all the Lord commanded them. But now that Joshua, God's servant, has gone off of the scene, the people have not obeyed the voice of the Lord when God said, this is my covenant I make with you, and I'll never break my covenant. God said in his word, my covenant will I not break, and neither will I alter the words going out of my mouth. But God had told them to utterly go in the land and destroy all of the wicked in that land. But the Bible says, and we read here even with a tone of regret and reluctance, he said, you have not obeyed my voice.

Why have you done this? Because if we were to read in Judges the first chapter, we would find out that out of seven and a half tribes that went over to the West Bank, because Moses had allowed two and a half tribes to stay on the East Bank of Jordan, but the seven and a half tribes that went into the land of Canaan, and they were to utterly destroy the wicked, tear down all their authors, because God said if you don't, their gods will be a snare unto you. But out of the seven and a half tribes that went over, we find out that the majority of them failed to drive out the inhabitants.

If you would read it, it said, and Manasseh failed, and Napali failed, and Asher failed, and such and such. And because of that, God said, you have not done what I told you to do. Therefore, I will not drive them out for you. I bring you into the land, but I tell you to drive them out in order to possess the land.

But because you have not done that, they are going to be a snare to you and thorns in your side. And when the angel of the Lord said that, it broke the heart of the people, and the people became grieved, and the Bible says they lifted up their voice. They lifted it up as one people and began to weep.

And the word there for weep means they began to wail and lament with a great crying and a great lament. And the Bible says they named the name of that place Bokeem, which means the valley of weeping, the valley of tears. Now we're going to revisit this valley again. Hundreds of years later, we're going to revisit this very same valley. But I want to take you into Psalm 84.

You can turn there now. And as you're turning, I will tell you that at the beginning of the Psalm, a lot of your Bibles will say that this was to be played to a certain kind of instrument called a geetith, which would be like our guitar today. It was a song that was meant to be sung. And as we get into this particular song, we're going to find out that they're going to go from the valley of Bokeem, the valley of tears and weeping, and God is going to bring them to a valley of triumph. I want to say this before we read the Psalm. God never wastes your tears. God will never waste your tears. Your tears are not wasted. David said in Psalm 56, he said, Lord, collect and put all my tears in your tear bottle. My wonderings are not hidden from you, but you're collecting my tears.

I may wander into the valley of tears sometimes, but even then you're going to take your tear bottle and collect my tears and you're going to write them down in your book. God never wastes our tears. There can never be a rainbow unless there was rain. And the only way your soul can have rainbows is for sometimes your eyes to have tears. But because sometimes you have tears in your eyes, you can have a rainbow in your soul because God will never waste your tears, but he will collect them. We know when we look in the book of Revelations, when we could look and see into the holy place that before the altar of God, there were bowls there and in the bowls there were odors and the odors are the prayers and the tears of the saints.

And God will collect our tears. I want you to know that the places of the Christian, when we walk in those wonderings that David said, he says, you know all about my wonderings. And sometimes you will come to the valley of tears. But what I want you to understand is the valley experiences of your Christian walk are not places of defeat. They are places where you are to stop and evaluate your situation. You're to look at the place that you're in and then you are to turn to God and you're to say, Lord, these are my tears that I'm weeping in this valley, but I give them to you and we're going to see what God will do with them.

They are places for us to evaluate our situation and then we are to turn unto the Lord. And what I want you to know is when you're in the valley and you're in those places, you need to draw closer to the Lord and not pull away. So many times people when they get discouraged or down or something hits them out of the blue and sort of knocks them down, the first thing they do is start withdrawing away from church.

And let me tell you right now that that's the worst thing that you could do because you're only going to sink lower in your despondency. You're only going to get more depressed and your faith is going to get weaker and your faith is the only thing that can give you the victory. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith and your faith can only be strengthened when you're in the house of God, hearing the word of God. The devil will tell us, stay home.

And when you do that, you're giving more place and more territory to the enemy. But if you will press your way and come to the house of God, then you will find that there'll be something there to minister to you and edify you because God is placed in his house that gives to be an operation and therefore the ministry to and the edifying of the saints. And Paul says, let the word that goes forth out of my mouth, let it edify and minister grace to the hearers.

But you can't hear if you're sitting home. And even Christian television, and I thank God for it because it's brought me through many of dark places, but even at best it's a supplement to the house of God. It's not the substitute, it's the supplement. You eat your diet and you eat your food and then you take your vitamins to supplement. If you tried to just live on vitamin pills and you never ate food, you would still die. But if you'll eat your good diet and take vitamin pills too, you'll have better and longer health. And so the house of God is your primary diet and listen to Christian tapes and watching Christian TV and listen to Christian radio and reading good Christian books are your vitamins and your supplements.

And you need to take those, but you can't lean on them as your primary source of nutrients. You've got to come to the house of God because God's house is an arena. It's where action is taking place.

It's where the warfare is taking place. Amen. Anytime that there's some kind of battle being a sports event, whether it's boxing or a football game or whatever, you've got to go to the arena. That's where they, then the contest takes place and God's house is the arena. I'm going to get to Psalm 84.

Hold on. But I want to tell you that God's word says in Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 and let us consider one another to provoke with love and to good work, not forsaking the assembly of yourselves together as the matter of some is. And that's why it's in the Bible. Otherwise we wouldn't have the scripture and so much the more as you see that day approaching. So now if we ever saw the day of the Lord approaching, when Paul wrote this in Hebrews 2000 years ago, I think it's safe to say we're a lot closer today and we are to come to the house of God and not forsake it. Because even if you say, well, I can stay home and watch TV and, and read books and all and listen to all my tapes of all the wonderful teachers and there's a lot out there.

I enjoy their teaching too. But the Bible says, what about you coming and provoking one another to good works and to love and the word provoke here, we usually think of it in a negative sense, but here it's in the good sense. It just means to pull out of you instead of, but you know, we always think you provoke me to get angry, but you can provoke someone to love and how can we do that sitting home and how can we be responsible to our brothers and sisters in Christ and how can we bring forth our measure of increase that we owe to the body when we're home? Well, I'll tell you the answer.

You can't. So even if you don't feel like you need to be in the house of God because you feel like you can get everything that you need, what about what you owe to the body of Christ? So no matter how discouraged or despondent you are, no matter how high your bills are piling up, no matter how many things have been going wrong in your life lately, don't get so discouraged that you stay home from church, but be like David. I love David and we're going to read this Psalm in just a moment. I promise you that David, when he had troubles hit him, the last thing he did was go to church. The first thing he did, the very first thing David did was run to the house of God.

Amen. The first thing he did was run for God's presence. David had all kinds of enemies and he had all kinds of things to contend with, but if he could just get into the house of God, he said, I was glad. I rejoice when they said, let us go into the house of the Lord because he realized that in God's house there was a place where he could be refreshed and he could be blessed and lifted up.

And so with that in mind, let's now look at Psalm 84 and we'll read the start off verses one through four. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cryeth out for the living God.

Yea, the sparrow hath an house and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young. Even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house. They will still be praising thee, Selah. And when you see the word Selah in the Psalms, many there's different interpretations, but most people seem to be of the opinion that it means repeat that, refrain, say that again.

That was so good, say that again. So blessed are they that are in the house of the Lord for they shall still be praising thee, Selah. They shall still be praising thee.

Why? Because how amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. The word amiable there, it would be better translated than we could understand it. Beloved, worthy of love. God's house is the place where we can come and be in the presence of the beloved.

The beloved, the Lord Jesus Christ and the beloved, the body of Christ because we are accepted in the beloved because we are part of the body of Christ. So he said how worthy, the Hebrew word yadid means how worthy, how much to be loved is the house of God. And David delighted to come into God's house to the point that he says my soul is longing and fainting, I have to get into the house of the Lord. I've got to get into God's presence. My soul and my flesh are crying out for the dead God. See that's what's the problem with a lot of people, they got a dead God.

And it doesn't matter if they came to church or not because their God's dead because they're dead. But when you know the living God and you come into the presence of the living God, your soul and your heart and your flesh begin to cry out to be in his presence. Now we have an interesting thing taking place here in verse 3 and what I want you to see is there's a parenthesis in here about the birds and we got to kind of take it out of the middle, set it on the side and then it will flow together like it belongs and let me show you what I mean. Yea the sparrow hath found an house and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young. Now it says even thine altars O Lord, that would lead us to believe that in the house of God there were birds' nests up on the altar. Isn't that kind of how it sounds? That the sparrow has found a place to lay her young, she's got a nest right there at the altar of the earth. Well that's not what it means.

And the problem is it's parenthetical and we got to take it out and read it like this. My soul longeth ye, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God, even thine altars O Lord, of hosts my God and my King.

So what David is saying here is I am longing to be in your house to come to your altars because the altars of the Lord in the house of God, the analogy is it's like the bird who makes the nest for her young. She loves her young, she loves her little chicklets, she loves her little babies and so she makes a place of safety and protection where they are safe and just like the bird cares for her young, Lord if I can get to your nest, if I can get to your altars, if I can get to your house, if I can come before the presence of the Lord, there is a place where you will protect me and care for me and watch over me. Let me tell you something, God really has a lot of care for birds. God is a bird lover.

If you want to learn about your father, start watching the birds. The birds take care of their babies and Jesus said that not one sparrow falls to the ground that God is in mindful. He didn't say an eagle.

He didn't say a hawk or a falcon. They're the big bad birds. They're valuable birds.

Some of them were on the endangered list. How many sparrows? There's billions of sparrows. Who cares about a sparrow?

It's the plainest, brownest, driest, most common bird there is. If he'd have said, oh, not one eagle falls that your father doesn't see it. No, he said the sparrow. God's got more sparrows than we know how to count. They can count the number of eagles.

They've already done that. They count how many falcons there are. They got below a certain number, endangered list. But who can count the sparrows? God can. And Jesus said, are you not worth more than many sparrows? So just like the sparrow makes a nest for her young, God's got a nest in his house, in his altar where we can come. And blessed are they that dwell in your house and in your presence. They will still be praising thee. Verse five, blessed is the man whose strength is in thee and whose heart are the ways of them, who passing through the valley of Bacchus make it a well. The rain also filleth the pools.

They go from strength to strength. Every one of them in Zion appearth before God. Now this is the verse I really want you to see.

I told you we were going to come back to the valley of Boking and that's exactly where we are. The man who comes into the house of the Lord is a man who's strong. He may even have been through the valley of tears, but because he comes into God's house, the Bible says his strength, blessed is the man who is in thee, his strength is in thee. And when he comes to the valley of tears, he dwells in God's house and sometime his wanderings and his journey take him to the valley of tears.

Because here he says when passing through the valley of Bacchus. Now this is the very same valley that I just read about in Judges the second chapter. The spelling and the pronunciation is slightly different, but it refers to the same valley. In Judges it was called Boking, which is actually plural I-N means tears, many tears.

Here it's called Bacchus or Bacchus. It's the same valley. Now when we read about this valley in Judges, it was a sad place to be. It was a place of wailing and lament because of their failure and their disobedience and God said because of that you're going to go through some hard places.

You're going to have thorns in your side and you're going to be vexed and aggravated with all these people's gods because you didn't get rid of them like I told you. And they were so sorrowful they lifted up their voice and lamented and cried. It speaks of a place of tears and suffering and weeping. But that same valley now is here in Psalm 84 and we find out that the person who has learned to run to the house of God, to love the house of God, to dwell, not visit, but dwell in the house of God, get their strength from the Lord. When he comes to that valley of Baca, that valley of tears, he makes it a well. All those tears that he wept and cried now are a well.

They're a valley of blessings. The valley of tears is now the valley of blessings because the well speaks of life and refreshment. He makes it, he says, a pool.

Actually, it's plural. The rain also filleth the pool. All the rain of your tears, all the rain of your hard places, all the rain of your trials when you wept bitterly, even when it was your own fault, even when you invited the trouble. But if you love God, if you run to the house of God, if your strength will be in the Lord, you will find out that he'll take all those tears. He's been saving them up in his bottle and he's going to take those tears and he's going to pour them out when you're in that valley and it's going to become refreshment. It's going to become a well.

It's going to become a place of refreshing. Hallelujah. You're going to go from Baca to Baraka because the word Baraka means blessings in the Hebrew. They say that the Hebrews pray and they say Baruch Hashem Adonai Eloheinu. Blessed is the name of the Lord.

The word Barak means blessings and Barak is just a feminine form of the word. You're going to go from Baca to Baraka. You're going to go from weeping to gladness. You're going to go from tears to triumph. That is if you run to the house of the Lord.

Amen. David said in Psalm 30 verse 11, Thou hast turned from me my mourning into dancing. Thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.

The prophet said in Isaiah 61 verse 3, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He hath anointed me and part of this anointed ministry he's given me is to give you that are in Zion mourning to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion and to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. You see, ashes speak of great sorrow. When really bad news or a bad report came, they would sit down, tear off their clothes, put on sackcloth and put ashes on their head.

Amen. It is the absolute epitome of sorrow, trouble, distress, grief, a time of great distress and sorrow. But he said he's going to take those ashes and give you beauty. And if you really researched that word, it talks about putting on a beautiful headdress, sort of like a tiara. It's going from sackcloth on your head to a crown of beauty and rejoicing. He's going to take away that sorrow in that mourning and he's going to give you the oil of joy. The Bible says let your garments always be white and let your head lack no ointment. The Holy Ghost when you come into the house of God will clean up your garments and anoint your head.

And though you walk through the valley, there goes one of those valleys, of the shadow of death, you'll fear no evil because even there in the presence of your enemy, the Lord will prepare a table before you and he will anoint your head with oil and your cup will run over. All right, Isaiah said in 51.11, therefore the redeemed. Does that fit anybody here this morning? The Bible says let the redeemed of the Lord say so.

Does that fit anybody here this morning? Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion. Now Zion is the mountain where God's hill, the hill where God's house was. So whatever you read about Zion in the scriptures automatically translate the house of God.

In your case, you can say faith tabernacle, or if you're visiting here this morning and you have another church, your church, whatever it might be. So Zion means the house of God wherever you go. They shall come and return to Zion with singing and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.

I want to say it this way. They're going to come back to Baca. They're going to come back to the valley of tears. Only this time they're going to come back with singing and everlasting joy upon their heads. And this time they're going to turn it into the valley of Barakah. It's going to be a valley of blessings and their sorrow and mourning is going to flee away and they're going to dance before the Lord and they're going to rejoice in their God and they're going to get stronger and stronger and stronger. Jeremiah 31, 13. Then shall the Virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together for I will turn their mourning into joy and will comfort them and make them rejoice from their sorrow.

That day, the angel of God came to them in Bokeem. They were sorrowful. They wailed and they lamented.

We don't even see it in the English as intense as it means. They cried and they wept bitterly, but that same valley a few hundred years later had turned into a valley of blessings and now they were going to return with joy and gladness and God had caused their tears now to turn into pools of water. Amen. We have not liked all this snow we've gotten.

We are fed up with it. We're up to here and beyond, but I'll tell you last summer when you couldn't water your flowers and you couldn't wash your car and some places they had to bring bottled water into the school and some places people's wells dried up and they had to pay thousands of dollars to try to dig another one. I tell you what, they may not have like shoveling all that snow, but in a few months from now their wells will be full and their flowers will be blooming. It takes rain and snow to make the bud come forth. The Bible says in Isaiah 55 that he causes the rain and the snow to come down from heaven and returns not thither, that it may bring forth the bud and the blade, that he may give bread to the eater and seed to the sower. So if you want to have bread to eat, you've got to have some rain.

If you want to have some seed to sow, you've got to have some snow. And if you want to turn the valley of tears into trial, you're going to have to cry sometime. But if you'll cry those tears, you'll get rainbows in your soul. Hallelujah.

Amen. What an uplifting word from the Lord from Bacchae to Barakah. If you've ever experienced an extended time in the valley of tears, you know how painful it can be. But our tears are precious to God. Actually, David, the beloved psalmist, prayed in Psalm 56, put my tears in your tear bottle.

And we learn in the book of Revelation that the prayers and tears of the saints are gathered into bowls before God's throne as sweet incense. The valley of Bacchae was one of Israel's lowest points, where they lifted up their voice as one to cry and lament over the judgment their disobedience had brought on the nation. It became known as the valley of bokeem or tears.

But centuries later, the writer of Psalm 84 declared that those who appear before God at his altars in the house of God go from strength to strength. And when they pass through the valley of Bacchae, the valley of tears, they make it into a well where the rain fills the pools. It becomes a valley of blessings.

They turn their tears into triumph. Another valley of testing for Israel was the valley of Achor, where sin in the camp committed by Achan caused them to lose a battle. And it became known then as the valley of Achor of cursings and reproach, where Achan and his family died and their bones were burned. But centuries later, Isaiah called that very same valley Sharon, a place where the flocks and God's people who sought him lay down and rest. Would you like to rest in the fields of Sharon, to go from strength to strength, to turn your tears into triumph and into rainbows for your soul? The key is to appear in God's house and make your delight and place of safety at his altars. Just as the sparrow builds a nest for her young, so God's altars are the place of blessing for his people. God never wastes our pain and he will redeem our tears when we seek his presence in his house.

For one day in God's house is better than a thousand elsewhere. To order from Baca to Baraka, send a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Request SK102. Or order online at rgharty.org, where it's also available on MP3. But to order SK102 from Baca to Baraka by mail, send your minimum love gift of $10 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. If the Lord directs you, please consider sending a larger gift towards the expenses of this station. Thank you and God bless you. Until next time, this is Sharon Notze, Maranatha.