"How Shall We Sing The Lord's Song?"

Dan Newburg

First Baptist Church of Devine

2022 Chronological Bible • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago • Presented 2 years ago

Psalm 137

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As mentioned in our prayer time for Uvalde Schools earlier in this service, our neighbors to our west are returning to school on Tuesday for the first time since May 24th. The first day of school in 2022 for Uvalde Consolidated ISD will not be like any of the first days of school in the years that have preceded it. Though 105 days will have elapsed since May 24th, for every person in Uvalde, the morning of September 6th will meet them with the same emotions that were present on that May afternoon. I expect that tensions will be high. I expect that tears will flow. Though the funerals have taken place, the grieving has not stopped. What transpired on May 24th will have an effect upon that community for the generation to come.

All because of the unspeakable, unfathomable evil that took the lives of 21 innocents.

Like a rock dropped in a calm, stilled body of water, though the most obvious disruption is where the rock entered the water, the effects of such are evident as the ripples expand outward. The effect of May 24th is not limited to Uvalde. Just 60 minutes away, we here in the Devine-area feel the first ripple of expansion.

You may be aware that there are new security protocols in place at our local schools this year, but this isn’t the effect that I speak of. As we have come to know the names and see the faces of May 24th’s victims, the sobering reality is that deep-down, we cannot shake free from those names and those faces. They don’t linger with us because of our empathy for a tragic situation. We cannot shake free from those beautiful souls because those names and faces look and sound very much like our own. We identify with Uvalde and we do so because we are the same people. So we join them in their grieving. We grieve with them and for them at the unimaginable reality that we live in a world where 19 children and 2 teachers left home for the last time because evil went to their school.

Tension

Yet, expanding further and further away where the ripples from Uvalde are not as strong, what took place on May 24th is acknowledged as an unfortunate event among an ever-growing list of unfortunate events. Innocents are being gunned down at schools, grocery stores, and places of worship every time we seem to turn around. But tragedy does not stop with what people can do with weapons. Floods in the region of Kentucky where we serve have taken the lives of 37. 1200 and counting are dead in floods that are ravaging the country of Pakistan as we gather today. In a week’s time, we as a nation will remember the day 21 years ago when acts of terrorism claimed the lives of 2,977.

I could go on but the fact of the matter here is that no one would want me to list tragedy after tragedy because we don’t know what to do with the associated grief. The sad reality is that with the frequency and accumulation of loss, we have collectively learned not how to deal with grief, but rather we have learned how to try to distance ourselves from grief and its sources. In fact, I would venture to guess that for some, if not many, the motivation to come to church is to drown out the bad news from out there by expecting something wholesome and uplifting in here. Yet our text this morning does not invite us to escape or ignore our grief, but rather it invites us to consider the question that must be addressed: What is the Christian’s response to tragedy? To loss? To grief?

Text

As we come to our text this morning, we are no longer interacting with the prophecy of Jeremiah, but now we have returned to the hymn book of the Bible. I want to invite us to first consider the context that surrounds this psalm and then seek to determine what God is communicating for us.

Context

Over the last month we have been reading from a number of different voices that God used to warn the divided kingdoms of Judah and Israel about their impending fall. In our time gathered as a church family, we’ve focused in on Jeremiah, where we’ve seen the heart condition of the covenant people of God.

They had little to no regard for the word of God that they were to supposed obey.

They overlooked that God could restore them even though they had strayed far from him.

They ignored the warnings about God’s judgement that was to come for their continued disobedience.

Acts of faith were nearly non-existent.

And now the judgement of God that Jeremiah warned Judah of has been fulfilled. That judgement has seen the holy city of Jerusalem leveled by the Babylonian army, with the army of Edom getting in on the action as well. Through the might of this pagan nation, God has taken away the land he gave to his people and his people are now enslaved once more, living in exile in a far away land.

From Babylon (vv 1-4)

And this is where this song of Israel opens very sadly, sitting along the river banks in ancient Babylon, simply weeping over what had been lost. It’s difficult for you and I to fully grasp the degree to which sorrow is with the people at the start of this psalm, but it is a loss that is seared into their collective memory. Much like “September 11, 2001” is seared into our memories. Much like Robb Elementary is seared into our memories. Much like there are painful and tragic events that we have individually experienced that are seared into our memories.

Why this is so devastating for these people is that Zion was supposed to be the glorious throne of the Lord and therefore a stronghold for God’s people, but after the invaders entered, the city was destroyed and now lay in ruins. The survivors have been taken far north from Zion and they have discovered that Babylon was anything but home for God’s people. There was no source of comfort because all the blessings of Yahweh’s rule in Jerusalem seemed to be permanently lost as they sat along the waters of Babylon.

This hopelessness amidst loss has broken the spirit of God’s people and they have lost all desire to sing, which should strike us as shocking because reading the psalms from earlier writers like David and others, the spirit of the people could be described as exuberant praise. Full bands carried the tune to joyful singing in Jerusalem but now God’s people are unable to even pick up their instruments. This is nothing like what girls do in cranking up their Taylor Swift playlists after a bad break-up with a boy. Music speaks to the soul yet so downtrodden is the situation that they cannot fathom to sing.

And to make matters worse, maybe to rub a little salt in the wound, the Babylonians are taunting God’s people with their demands to sing one of the songs of Zion. “Where’s your God now?” And in a sense, that mocking was legitimate. The songs of Zion were songs of praise to the Lord but in their exile, God’s people had been estranged from him. It’s not that God stopped being God - he’s everywhere all the time. But what’s given Israel such sorrow is that the place where they should be worshipping him has been lost and as far as they’re concerned, as they sit along the river banks of Babylon, it’s gone forever.

You and I know some sense of this paralyzing pain brought on by loss. That sense of loss can come about by any number of things. Failed relationships. Losing one’s innocence. Times of death.

In every sense, God’s people were experiencing the death of the nation and they faced the grim reality that as they looked into the waters in Babylon, the reflections looking back at them from those waters revealed who brought their death and grief upon them. Now, I don’t want to get caught up in them, but I want us to notice what we are invited to learn from the opening verses of this psalm. Sitting, weeping, remembering, these are actions of a people who are grieving. They are actions of a people who are present to the source of their grief. And sadly, it’s as God’s people are attempting to be present to their grief that their captors do two things: 1.) Mock them by demanding that they sing a song of praise and 2.) they attempt to deny them the ability to process their grief. You cannot begin to process what’s happened until you are present to the source of what is making you grieve. And that’s exactly what the captors of Judah are intending to deny them by calling upon them to sing the songs of Zion.

This destruction of Jerusalem takes placed in 586 B.C. I’m skipping forward in time and going to let you in on a secret that the city will be rebuilt and only to be destroyed again by the Romans in 70 A.D. When the Romans conquered Jerusalem, they only allowed the Jews to come near the city one day a year. They did this so the Jews could see the ruins and give them a chance to weep again but they didn’t let them remain in the city so as to keep them from being made whole. 1900 years later, when the Germans held Jews in concentration camps, even though they were being starved and forced to do hard labor, in order to survive, the Jews had to be and look happy. And here the Babylonians demanded that the Jewish captives sing songs of joy so as to deprive them of their sadness.

And you hear these examples and probably think, “How terrible!” And you’re thinking right. How terrible it is to deny someone the opportunity to grieve loss! How terrible it is to make someone pretend to be happy! It’s just inhumane, isn’t it? Tell me then, why do we do this to ourselves?

“What do you mean?” I’m pointing to the fake it until you make it culture. Pretending like we’ve got all our stuff together. Pretending that we can take a licking and keep on ticking. We as a society are depriving ourselves of what God intends to accomplish with sadness and grieving by avoiding it completely. How can I make that claim? By pointing to the epidemic that is the skyrocketing mental health crisis in this nation. Attempting to avoid things doesn’t make those things magically go away. And just a cursory study in the human psyche will show you that unresolved grief leads directly to depression and anxiety, as well as alcohol, drug, and food addictions. You may think you’re in control by running from your pain, but the pain of your loss will take life from you until you embrace the God-given gift of lament.

And the psalmist here provides an example about how we can and should lament over the painful and tragic events that have been seared into our memories. As we will discover, and quite opposite to what we are trained to believe by the way the world conducts itself, grieving is good for the soul. Grieving is a gift from God that encourages you and I to begin to express our feelings. Yes, for many, grieving involves tears and bitterness as we remember what is gone. Healthy ways of remembering might involve talking about what has been lost. It might involve journaling. But the fact of the matter is that we have to go through our Babylons. We cannot go around our Babylons.

To Jerusalem (vv 5-9)

“What’s the point, preacher? What does God do with those Babylon moments? How does God use this supposed gift of grief?”

The Lord uses them in two ways.

1. To focus our hearts upon him (vv 5-6)

We need to keep proper context. This is a psalm that describes the great lament of God’s people in their exile that frankly, was self-inflicted. They had not held up their end of the covenant made with God. They ignored the word of God. They went their own way, believing they knew best for themselves. Oh, they knew about God. They may have even stopped long enough at the supper table to voice a prayer on the order of “good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat!” But their hearts had grown cold and callous towards the Father in heaven who loved them, who delivered them, who sustained them, who protected them. They overlooked his grace. They didn’t want a relationship. Those things take work. They found that it’s easier to show up, to sit down for a while, and put some money in for the offering. Don’t get me wrong, these people were very religious, but that’s not what the Lord desired. His covenant wasn’t just a transaction like if you do this, then you’ll get that. His covenant was about the special and unique relationship available between Yahweh and Israel, where Israel was to be obedient, because that obedience would bear witness to the love that his redeemed people have for him because of his immense love for them.

And so they forgot this. They had forgotten God. And it’s in Babylon, as a product of their grieving, that we can begin to see how God uses lament. In the depth of their pain and torment, they realize that God has not forgotten them, but in his love, he’s brought about this situation to cause them to return to him. In Psalm 137:5-6 the song of God’s people is a vow to the Lord. The psalmist declares now, Psalm 137:5 “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!” For the people of God to forget Jerusalem and all that it represented in worship of the Lord now, it would leave them without power or joy.

In causing his people’s hearts to return to him, God brought about the destruction of his holy city and the loss of the Promised Land to break the people of their pride and insolence. I suspect there are a few of us in this room who know a thing or two about being broken. As I look around the room this morning, though I don’t know everyone’s testimony, I know many of you can identify with the sense of loss as it relates to God bringing you to salvation. Some great trial, be it the death of a love one, the loss of possessions, failed relationships and so on was an instrument by which the Lord opened your eyes to him.

John 9 tells of the time where Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind. It’s a wonderful chapter of the Bible that connects with the spiritual blindness of men and women both from our birth as sinners as well as by things like religion that only further blind us to Jesus’ kingdom. So Jesus gave this blind man sight and the religious leaders start in with their criticizing. At the end of the chapter, the religious types ask, “Are we blind?” and John 9:41 “41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”

For these religious leaders, their moment of loss was realizing that their religious practices did nothing for them before God. They were spiritually blind, just as we are born spiritually blind. But be it on the river banks of Babylon, around Palestine, or in Devine, the kingdom breaks in when we confess our inability to save ourselves. God chooses to meet us in our brokenness, breaking in to the despair and hopelessness and reveals himself in his magnificence. Thus the blind see. And when we see who Jesus is, we confess our loyalty to him as Savior and Lord. That though we have great pain, the song of our hearts is one we know best: Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch; like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.

Has the magnificence of the Lord been revealed to you? Have you looked to the cross where Jesus died? That glorious cross where Jesus shed his blood and was crucified? It’s a terrible thing, that an innocent man would die in such a way. Yet this was the will of God that would have the Son of God go through the cross so that the judgement due sinners would be laid upon him. So that your grief would not define you, but his would. And the call to salvation for each person who is made to see is to trust that what Jesus has done on the cross is sufficient to atone for their sin. Which brings us to the second way God uses lament:

2. To remind us to trust God (vv 7-9)

Verses Psalm 137:7-9 are what make this psalm so difficult to read. We go from an expression of grief to a vow and at the end, the most chilling of prayer requests. A prayer that essentially says, “God, please remember those terrible people who said hurtful things while they laid waste to your city and your people. What joy there will be for the people who repay them what they are due!” And in one of the most shocking verses of all the Bible, speaking of the children of Babylon, Psalm 137:9 “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!”

Friends, let me address this quickly by saying just a few things. If you have been saved by the God of the word, do not be embarrassed by anything in the word of God. This is not license to harm children. What we have is a prayer that does give us permission to be absolutely human before God. To say, “God, I’m so mad. This is how angry I am. This is how I feel. There’s been such injustice here. There’s so much wrong.” Because when we’ve arrived at that place of grief, that place of brokenness, it’s not as if that point of emotional low is the only emotion we’re going to feel. And as we’re present to that grief, there will be things that make us angry. Maybe even angry at God. And what we have here is God’s invitation to give our anger to him. To trust him with it.

And here’s the thing we have got to take away, God’s the only one who can properly handle our anger. See, this is anger given to God in the form of prayer that is ultimately an expression of trust. “God, I’m so mad at Babylon that I want to do terrible things to their babies!” It’s OK to feel that, don’t deny your humanness, be real with yourself. Be real with God.

Because here’s the thing about trusting what Jesus has done on the cross to be sufficient is about - Romans 5:8-9 “ God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” God himself in the Person of Jesus Christ went to the cross to serve as a perfect sacrifice, to shed his sinless blood while the wrath of God was poured out upon him. Christ died for us yes. And Christ is arisen! And if only God can shoulder God’s own anger, do you think your anger to be too much for him? Is anything too difficult for God?

But, and here’s a word of warning, if you give that anger to anyone other than God, be prepared for ruin. Relationships you’ll never be able to repair. Memories of actions you’ll only regret. Trust that God will judge everyone equally and with justice, according to God’s standard of justice.

Application

Because here’s the thing about this whole psalm, written between every verse: God is faithful. God has the last say. He’s already exacted the justice his holiness demands for those who will trust in Jesus Christ unto salvation through the cross.

No matter the Babylons we face, when we go through them, we can get to our Jerusalems. That’s where the God who began a good work in us will continue to do good works in us, growing and maturing us. So that when we arrive at our next Jerusalem, the perspective God has given us shines gospel light into the darkness of our lives and even casts what made us grieve and lament in the light of hope.

Israel had to go through Babylon to return to the Promised Land.

Jesus had to go through the cross to bring about the redemption of the cosmos.

When we’re in our Babylons of tragedy, grief, and sorrow, God is present with us. When the hour seems darkest, God is inviting us to turn to him and see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Christ can transform our sadness to joy by bringing us to delight in him and the ultimate deliverance that comes at his return. Christ’s return is fulfillment of the gospel, that will cease our prayers of inquiry Revelation 6:10 “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Christ will dwell with us in his kingdom. There will no longer be days of mourning.

It’s this truth that shines light into our darkness.

Inspiration

It’s this truth that we each must each come to know in our own way, that a poet so eloquently described in this way:

Until I learned to trust, I never learned to pray; And I did not learn to fully trust, Till sorrows came my way.

Until I felt my weakness, His strength I never knew, Nor dreamed ‘til I was stricken, That he could see me through.

Who deepest drinks of sorrow, Drinks deepest, too, of grace; He sends the storm so he himself, Can be our hiding place.

His heart, that seeks our highest—GOOD—Knows well when things annoy; We would not long for heaven, If earth held only joy.

Action

Friend, long for heaven and her king. If you’re in the midst of sorrow, give God thanks for it and await the completion of his purposes for it. Trust him in the darkness. Find joy in singing the Lord’s song because God shines light into our darkness.

Have you hidden yourself in the risen Lord Jesus? Is he shining in your heart the light of the gospel? Turn from your ways to him. Trust him. Drink deeply of his grace.

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