"By the rivers of Babylon" (Psalm 137) // Summer Psalms

Good morning everyone. This morning we're reading from

Psalm 137, which can be found on page 627 of the Green Church

Bibles. By the rivers of Babylon we sat

and wept when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors

asked us for songs. Our tormentors demanded songs of

joy, they said. Sing us one of those songs of

Zion. How can we sing the songs of the

Lord while in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may

my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof

of my mouth. If I do not remember you, if I

do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day

Jerusalem fell. Tear it down, they cried.

Tear it down to its foundations, Daughter Babylon doomed to

destruction. Happy is the one who repays you

according to what you have done to us.

Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them amongst

the rocks. If you're getting the sheets,

getting those, as you've heard, we're looking at Psalm 137 this

morning. So I just want to say great

beef. Thank you to Richard for that.

It's difficult. It's a difficult passage, isn't

it? And so to get us into thinking

about how we might apply this crazy part of Scripture to

today, what we're going to do, we'll begin by watching a video.

Now, this is a piece of ancient history, OK?

This is from the last Millennium.

This this video, and therefore to get yourself into thinking

about it, what I want you to do is as you watch and listen to

this video, I want you to think about 3 questions.

The first question is the word Babylon.

The word Babylon is in Psalm 137.

It's also in the video, but they mean different things when

you're watching the video. What does the video mean by

Babylon? Second question, the same the

word Zion, the word Zion is in Psalm 137.

It's also in the video they mean something slightly different.

So in the video, what does Babylon and Zion mean?

And final question, as you're watching the video, how does it

make me feel? How does the video make me feel?

Now we're I'm conscious of time, so we might not play all of it,

but do you want to just play the video?

So we're thinking about Psalm 137.

I'm conscious of time, so we'll make this net bit fairly quick.

But anybody brave enough to shout out what what the song

when the when Boney MA German reggae band, by the way, when

they're singing in 1978 about Babylon, What do they mean?

Anybody want to give any offers or rather shy?

OK, well, just to give you a bit of a hint, a lot of the the

Negro spiritual songs refer to any oppression as Babylon.

So they're probably thinking these are songs.

Psalm 137 has been sung by originally slaves in the

Caribbean, for example, and Babylon is is any picture of of

western oppression. Likewise Zion.

But OK, one key question. How did it make you feel?

Anybody brave enough to call out or didn't it make you feel at

all? Oh, yes, sorry.

I'm like, yeah, brilliant. Exactly.

So there there's a sort of a tension, A dissonance there

between quite upbeat. But actually there's a what?

The real deep sadness and pathos in this song, isn't it?

It's making you feel quite sad. Well, we're going to think about

that a lot as we start to think through Psalm 137, because what

we need to realise is that Jerusalem is a historic place.

There is a city called Jerusalem and Babylon is a historic place

you can go to, I think it's in Iraq now.

Today you can go to where Babylon was.

But in the Bible these two cities take on symbolic

importance. They they represent more than

just the thing. In fact, you could say that the

story if you wanted the various ways to sum up the whole Bible.

One way to sum up the whole Bible is the Bible is a tale of

two cities. And so the first city, as it

were, starts in Eden with God's people living under God's rule

perfectly in paradise. That eventually is looking

forward to Jerusalem, also known as Mount Zion, because David

built his city around literally the mount.

It's what it's called, Mount Zion.

But I want us to see that that later on points to Jesus.

It's fulfilled in some ways in Jesus and in the church.

And then in Hebrews 12 and Revelation 21, it looks forward.

So in the Bible, heaven, we might talk about heaven.

The Bible talks about a heavenly Jerusalem, a city coming down to

God's people, which is also a garden, interestingly in

Revelation. But the same way as Jerusalem

being this symbol of of God's people living under his rule,

equally throughout the Bible, Babylon has the opposite

picture. It is a city of godless people.

It's a city of people living without God.

So in Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel is the origin of Babylon.

Then it comes to be a literal city, a city state, which then

takes on an empire, conquers the the Jewish people, takes the

Jews off into exile. That's when Psalm 137 is

written. But Babylon takes on a meaning

more than itself. So it's very interesting as some

of the Old Testament writers like Ezra and Nehemiah, they can

talk about some of the Persian kings that followed.

So after the Babylonian Empire, you've got the Persian Empire,

Ezra, Nehemiah can refer to the Persian kings as kings of

Babylon. And then when we move from the

Old Testament to the New Testament, Babylon is applied to

Rome. We've got another city that is

another picture of people living away from God, which is the city

of destruction. Now to in order to understand

Psalm 137, you've got to get this straight.

There's something more going on than just Jerusalem and Babylon.

This is really a tale of two cities.

And therefore the main point of this Psalm is that to be loyal

to Zion, we must be sure that Babylon will fall.

I'll say that again, to be loyal to Zion, we must be sure that

Babylon will fall. If you're a believer in Jesus

this morning, as it were, you live in Babylon, but you long

for Jerusalem. And as we were hearing that even

the, even the Bony Em's version just gives us attention there.

What does it mean to live in that tension?

How do believers live in Babylon while long Eva Zion?

Well, the psalmist tells us to do three things.

Number one, mind the gap #2 keep the faith and #3 long for the

end. So first of all, mind the gap.

Notice there's a Corp verse, verse 4 verses, all corporate.

This is this is the deep grief of the church, God's people in

exile. And as I say, the first thing

the psalmist tells us to do is to mind the gap.

Anyone has ever used the tube knows what that means.

But before we turn to what the psalmist means by mind the go, I

just want to like give an introductory thought that we

also need to be careful to mind the gap, and that is the gap

between our context and the context of Psalm 137.

What we're going to see is it's fine for God's people today to

sing Psalm 137 to make it our prayer.

After all, it was written for God's people to sing it, so

there's no problem at us singing it today.

The toing and froing, did you notice between I and we

throughout the Psalm makes it clear that it was written by one

person, but they meant God's people corporately to sing it.

But my point is by mind the gap, let's not rush to put these

words into our mouths. The Jews in exile had been

literal captives. They were actual slaves.

Jerusalem was not in metaphorical ruins, but in real

ones. So is it OK to use verse 4 as a

cry in Leicester today? How can we sing the songs of the

Lord while in a foreign land? Well, sort of.

We do see increasing secularization.

It does feel more and more as if when you turn up on a Sunday,

you are singing songs to the Lord in a foreign land.

But let's sort of tone down the rhetoric a bit.

We're, we're not like we're not experiencing anything like

these. The Exiles were in Jerusalem.

There's a huge gap between our experience and that of the

Psalm. OK, but what does the psalmist

mean by mind the gap? Well, look at verses 1 to 4.

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered

Zion. There on the poplars we hung our

hearts, for there our captors asked us for songs.

Our tormentors demanded songs of joy.

They said sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How can we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land?

Do you do you hear the tension in the song?

See, the problem was Zion was in ruins.

There they were in magnificent Babylon with the Euphrates River

and the Tigris River, it's wonderful irrigation canals all

producing the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the the wonders

of the ancient world. All of that would look so

impressive, just like maybe London or New York does today.

Beijing. And rather like as Boney M was

singing about, rather like the slaves in the sugar plantations

in the Caribbean in the 17th century, so here too in Babylon,

their captives are demanding that they sing songs as mere

entertainment. This is utter humiliation.

The promises of the Lord are being directly mocked.

So do you, do you feel some of that sadness as we listen to the

song? I don't know, maybe some of us

here. I know certainly at Knighton are

old enough to remember when Melbourne Hall had a Sunday

school of hundreds and hundreds of children.

And yet today we turn on the TV and it's full of comedians

mocking the church relentlessly. Have you wept?

See, the word remembered is intentional.

They were doing remembering may maybe, I don't know, maybe they

would sing Psalm 46 in exile or or Psalm 48.

They would they would be encouraging other with these

words. There is a river whose streams

may glad the city of God, the holy place where the most High

dwells. God is within her.

She will not fall. God will help her at break of

day. How?

How could you say that Psalm out loud in Babylon?

It would just seem ridiculous, wouldn't it?

But that is the point. The Psalms teach us to feel what

we're supposed to feel. And I wonder this morning, do

you ever find, do you ever feel that mismatch in church because

you're supposed to? Are there ever times where

you're singing a song and you're just thinking, really I do.

There's lots of times I'm singing a song and I find myself

stopping part way through, not because I don't believe that the

words are true. I know in here they're true.

But my heart is saying, really, my heart is saying, John, can

you with all integrity, can you really sing that?

We always feel that mismatch, and let's be honest about that.

And even more so in exile. How can you sing a God to a God

and about a God who heals the leper when he won't heal your

own daughter? How do you sing to a God who

saves but he won't save your father?

How can you sing about a great God whose Kingdom is growing

while church attendance plummets?

Or maybe our particular church is growing, so we we sing those

songs with triumphant gusto. What about the rest of the

church in the UK? Don't we really care?

The psalmist is saying, mind the gap.

It is really healthy to vocalize those questions.

I find an about the Richard finds the same, but on a Sunday

at the end of the service, people seem to think that I want

to hear like that was a really lovely service.

I've got to be honest, I don't well put it this way.

I would be much happier if people were angry or they were

asking really hard questions because I'm often thinking,

look, did you not read Psalm 137?

There are huge issues there. Are we not wrestling with this

stuff together? But notice that the psalmist

still expects us to sing these songs.

After all, he's written the Psalm.

This is, I want to be clear, this is not advocating some kind

of cynical withdraw from worship.

The opposite, that we engage more in the songs that we sing,

but we reflect on them. We think, do I really believe

this stuff? That's the first thing from

Psalm 137. Mind the gap.

Secondly, keep the faith. Verses 5 to 6.

Notice it. The voice changes.

It's now an individual speaking, probably the author of the

Psalm. If I forget you, Jerusalem, may

my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof

of my mouth. If I do not remember you, if I

do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy, the Psalm change is

tack dramatically there, doesn't it?

There's a, there's a generational thing going on

here. So the older generation are worn

down by exile, but the younger generation are starting to say,

is this all true? And the point is that in those

situations, we need to face those questions with Scripture

and with integrity. Faith is like a muscle.

It grows by stretching. It dies, it atrophies through

lack of use. As I've said, I'm in a group

actually with Graham and we often we meet and we read a book

together. And a few years ago we read this

book written by the Puritan Richard Sibbs called The Bruised

Read. As it happens, we weren't that

impressed through the way the Richard handles scripture.

Richard Sibbs. That is not Richard Brewster,

but Sib's is full of Nuggets of gold, wonderful pastoral wisdom.

The book is written for bruised reads.

It's written for people who've been bruised by sin, bruised by

suffering, bruised by doubt. And in it he says this.

Nothing is so certain as that which is certain after doubts.

We wrestle with these things honestly and it confirms our

faith. Putting our head in the sand

does not help anything at all. So this individual voice is his

personal loyalty to the Lord and gives an implicit challenge to

everyone. And the Psalm starts with

remembering Zion. And then verse 5 we have the

opposite. If you don't remember, then you

forget. And by remember, he doesn't just

mean like remembering, you know, a date of a battle.

He means intentionally recalling God's covenant with his people

or as verse 6 puts it, set Jerusalem as my highest joy.

So when we sing songs on the Sunday, we're not ducking those

issues, We're not dodging questions.

But what we're doing when we sing songs of worship, when we

praise, we are setting our hearts on the heavenly

Jerusalem, the place where God's people one day will live in

paradise under God's rule. That's what I mean by keep the

faith. Now, what does that mean in

practice? Well, as we've seen, that

doesn't mean that we think about the historic city of Jerusalem

that's on the news all the moment at the time.

Now the New Testament calls instead believe us, to set their

hearts on the heavenly Jerusalem that's coming down from heaven.

And that's not the same as just saying believe Now.

It's an act of the will and it evolves the mind.

But it's more of a heart thing, isn't it?

The set Jerusalem as my highest joy means that I make heaven my

home, the new heavens and the new earth.

It means, as it were, that in my wallet, on my phone, I have a

photo of heaven and I get it out regularly.

And I say to myself wistfully that that's home, this is good,

this is good, but that that's home.

That's the place that I was made for.

That's what my heart longs for. So as I look forward, not

backwards, that's what the Reform Party, William Blake, all

those people painting St. George's crosses, that's what

they're getting wrong at the moment.

Followers of Jesus are not trying to recreate a Christendom

of the past, as if that was even possible.

Followers of Jesus instead, they're not looking backwards,

they're looking forwards to the heavenly Jerusalem that is our

home. Mind the gap, keep the faith,

then finally smash the babies. Well, that's what it seems to

say, doesn't it? But my last point is long for

the end. Is that because I'm bottling it?

Am I, Am I sort of domesticating God's word?

Am I sort of watering down the heart?

I mean, it is. Verse 9 is so brutal, isn't it?

I've read it many times in preparing, but when I heard it

again this morning, I just winced.

Remember, Laura, the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell?

Tear it down, they cried. Tear it down to its foundations.

Daughter Babylon, doomed to disruption.

Happy is the one who repays you according to what you've done to

us. Happy is the one who seizes your

infants and dashes them against the rocks.

There are so many questions in those verses.

Let's just take them really quickly.

What's so bad about the Edomites in verse 7?

Well, the short answer is, read the book of Obadiah, the

Edomites, cousins of Israel, because they were familial, as

it were. Their betrayal of Jerusalem when

it fell was that much more painful that they had when

Babylon attacked Jerusalem, The Edomites had sided with Babylon.

So listen carefully, though, in response to that bitter, bitter

action, what the psalmist says in verse 7, notice he does not

call for revenge. He merely asked the Lord to

remember what the Edomites has done.

He prays, he does not curse. Yes, this was a terrible

pretrial. This was the treachery of a

brother, like the betrayal of Judas.

But he doesn't call for revenge. Similarly, verses 8 and 9,

they're not a curse either. The only curse in Psalm 137

comes in verse 6 on himself. If he does not remember what he

is instead doing, he's not calling for revenge.

He is expressing a confidence that God will judge the wicked,

that heaven is only possible if the wicked are removed, that

Zion can only rise if Babylon falls.

Now the word translated happy in verses 8 and 9 is normally

rendered blessed. Blessed in the sense of doing

God's will. So he's not praying for revenge.

He's simply saying that God's will be done.

Now that might seem like a pedantic distinction, but it's

not. He is trusting in the justice of

God is what he's doing. Because it might be tempting to

write this Psalm off as well. This is an Old Testament

reality, and Christians don't live like that anymore.

But unfortunately, as we've seen already in Revelation chapter

Revelation 18 · chapter mention

18, the apostle John applies exactly that.

He takes Babylon as an image and applies the same things to Rome.

So the message of the New Testament is the same as the Old

Testament. Zion can only rise if Babylon

falls. And so we come to these really

hard words in verse 9 that we shouldn't be glib.

What does he mean? What is going on?

Well, it's the main point that the self regenerating power of

Babylon will one day be finally gone.

Is Psalm 137 saying that Babylon will only keep on spreading her

wickedness across the globe until the day where God stops

Babylon from ever reproducing anymore?

That there is patience, but that God's patience will finally

stop? That the only way to be saved is

to cease being a Babylonian, an Edomite.

This is a hard cry for Babylon to be no more because everyone

in the world experiences the salvation of Jesus Christ.

At least that's the offer. So there's something

uncomfortable that we have to wrestle with this morning.

Yes, this is not about revenge. Yes, in the New Testament, Jesus

redirects this Psalm on the cross.

Of course he prays for forgiveness.

So of course, when we pray for Gaza and Ukraine, we pray for

peace and reconciliation. We don't pray for revenge and

further bloodshed. But as we pray that, what do we

pray for those who refuse ever to stop living like this, who

refuse ever God's mercy? The crime writer PD James in her

novel Original sin, she's there's a in, in the novel,

there's an interaction between 2 characters.

One's a, a Jewish colleague and the one character says, says to

her friend, it, you know, she's basically not really sure there

is a God. But if I had a God, I'd like him

to be intelligent, cheerful and amusing.

And a Jewish colleague replies, Well, I doubt you'd find him

much of A comfort when they herded you into the gas

chambers. Then you might prefer a God of

vengeance. And that's the issue that

Christians have to wrestle with as we think of heaven.

We all long for heaven, but we don't like to think about what

is necessary for heaven to be heaven, that for heaven to be

heaven, all evil one day must be removed, including those who

refuse ever God's mercy. So disturbing though it is,

verse 9 points us to the doctrine of hell.

What is God supposed to do with those who refuse ever to accept

Him? A few months ago, I won't go

into all the details. I was talking to someone who who

was living in eastern Ukraine until the war forced him to flee

with his family. And now he's he's in the UK and

he finds it really hard because every week he's getting phone

calls from his church members back in the church in Ukraine.

What is he supposed to say to comfort the one particular

woman? She lives in a house that shares

a wall with a cafe. So next door is a cafe.

And she says, how do I sleep at night when most nights,

certainly every weekend, all I hear is the screams of women.

How is the Lord going to make Ukraine and Russia part of the

new heavens and new earth without removing one day all

wickedness? Yes, the Lord is patient.

Yes, he's slow to anger. Yes, he wants all people to save

and come to knowledge of the truth.

But eventually, for the New Jerusalem to come down, Babylon

must give way. Therefore, if you're a follower

of Jesus, you long for the end, not with Glee, not with hearts

full of revenge, but with a sad resignation that eventually this

will mean the destruction of all those who reject God.

This is the end result. When you pray your Kingdom come,

your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Psalm 137 has to at least be in the background.

But if you set Jerusalem as your highest joy, then your heart

will always be restless to some degree until you get there.

Too much contemporary Christianity, I think is is

satisfied with the present. Instead, let's long for paradise

while realizing that for Jerusalem to come, Babylon must

be destroyed. So mind the gap, keep the faith

long for the end. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, these are really difficult words of

Scripture for us to wrestle with, and I pray that You will

take Your Word and work it out in our hearts by Your Spirit.

Help us to wrestle with it with integrity this morning.

Anything that I've said that's distracting and unhelpful, may

we forget that quickly. But whatever is a true

explanation of Your Word, Lord planted as a seed in our hearts,

watered by Your Spirit, that might grow to full faith in

Christ as we long for the heavenly Jerusalem.

Amen.