Can I return the warm welcome and bring greetings from a congregation at Coromandel Baptist Church. We're running ahead of them. They are just gathering now for their public worship. We're about a half an hour ahead of where they are. But later in the service they will actually be praying for us and they remember this congregation and others with whom we have links in prayer regularly and it's a delight to be amongst you again. It's very important I think if you have a Bible to be able to look on today to the psalm we've read, Psalm 137. Also you might like to have a finger in a passage from the prophet Jeremiah. In particular we may make reference to Jeremiah chapter 50 and 51. And I've just looked in the Pew Bibles there and that's on page 1260. 1260 is the Pew Bible number for Jeremiah chapter 50. Psalm 137 is our main theme. And I have officially removed Derek from our Christmas card list. Derek said, I'm doing a series on the Psalms, would you come up, preach on one of the Psalms and preach on marriage and relationships in the evening. I said, sure Derek, no problem, thinking I'd get Psalm 23 or perhaps Psalm 2 or Psalm 110 and Derek's taken all of those and he's given me Psalm 137. And Psalm 137 in some senses we understand, but in another sense perhaps it's one of the most troubling passages in the whole of Scripture. You wouldn't have any trouble with Psalm 137 until you got to about verse 8. But the most trouble you have with Psalm 137 is verse 9. Would that be true? So thank you Derek Schiller. But this is actually a portion of God's Word and it's important that we give our attention to it and I make no apologies for the fact this morning that I'll ask you to actually think with me about what this passage means. This is not a sermon to sit back and be entertained, it is a sermon to think together through a passage and I'm going to tell you at the very beginning, it's going to demand a little bit of us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically because you have to stay awake to think. Underneath what I'm saying today, are a set of two or three statements that are very, very closely related and very important to the whole understanding of the plan and purpose of God, not just in the scriptures, not just in theology, but what I'm about to say is very important for your life and my life. And it's very important to help us understand passages like Psalm 137. And that is this, evil is really evil. There is nothing in evil that is excusable, there is nothing in evil that is logical or rational and evil is really evil. Because evil is really evil, It must be judged by God and it is judged by God and it has been judged by God in the cross in particular and the final revelation of that judgement will come when our Lord Jesus returns and we will see that all evil in all its forms, whether that evil come from human hearts or whether it come from spiritual principalities and powers, forces of wickedness in heavenly places, we will see at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we see by faith now in the scriptures, that all evil is judged. God does not let an angel or a devil or a human being get away with anything. Not one jot or tittle escapes. And the third thing is evil is really evil and God judges all evil wherever it is found but that does not stop God using evil for his own purposes. And God's own purposes in using evil are threefold. It reveals the nature of human sin and wickedness. It also reveals the glory of God in His holiness, righteousness and justice as He brings judgement to that evil. And thirdly, God brings judgement to that evil to save His people. Now that set of statements governs the whole of the scripture and governs everything in your life and my life. Now there's a very clear example of these things in the Old Testament. You'll remember the story of Joseph and you'll remember how Joseph was hated by his his brothers, how he was, well initially they were going to murder him and then they chickened out of that plan and they sold him into slavery, he ended up in Egypt and you know all of the traumas of that imprisonment where he was unjustly imprisoned for many years and it seemed as though everyone had forgotten about him and you know the story how he ended up being second in command in Egypt and then eventually when his family came back, what's the statement? You meant it for evil. but God meant it for good. And the great example of all of this is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ where in the book of Acts, for example, in chapter 4 verse 27 and following, the Apostle Peter says, gathered together in this city Jerusalem against your holy servant Jesus was Herod and Pontius Pilate and all the Jews and all the people of Israel Pilate was a coward, Judas was a traitor, Peter was a coward, the high priests were hypocrites. It was all evil. But gathered together in this city were all of these people to do whatever your hand and purpose predestined to occur. So, is the action of the cross, from one point of view, the wicked action of godless men? And the answer is yes. But is that also the action by which God saves a multitude that no man can number? And the answer is yes. So does that God make God the author of evil? The answer is no. But does it mean that God uses that which is evil in the hearts of men and women and demons and principalities and powers? The answer is yes. It's all used to further his purpose and to bring glory to his name. Now that principle underlies everything I'm going to say today. If you fall asleep, you've at least got the main principle, but don't fall asleep. The best bit's coming, I think. So when we come to Psalm 137 and we read the statements towards the end, particularly the statements in verse 9, how do we understand that and how do we make sense of that from this side of our Christian experience? There's a few ways in which passages like this have been understood and while we're focusing on Psalm 137 today, if you were to go through many of the Psalms, you find many similar passages but not just in the Psalms. You find them in many other places in the Old Testament and you find them also in places in the New Testament. These are what the theologians call or the biblical scholars call imprecatory statements. Well, it depends on which side of the Atlantic you learnt your English. On one side it's imprecatory and on the other side it's imprecatory. So, it's either an imprecatory psalm or an imprecatory psalm but an imprecation is a curse. So, when you call down a curse on someone, when you ask for judgement to fall, you make an imprecation. I bet there's a few imprecations that have been called down on certain people in Wall Street over the last two weeks. So this is an example of an imprecatory passage, but not the only one. And if we had time this morning, we could actually draw up a big list of them and we could go through some of them. So in general principle, how do we understand it? And we'll move from the worst to the best. The worst way to understand these statements is That's Old Testament and now we are in New Testament. Old Testament, ancient, barbaric, bronze age, unthinking, New Testament, all enlightened, spiritual, lovely. If you read both Old Testament and New Testament, you find that doesn't match because there are magnificent statements of grace and mercy and love in the Old Testament and equally strong statements of death, destruction and judgement in the New Testament. So if that's Old Testament therefore we don't have to think about it, that argument has been destroyed. Second way we can understand it is this, God through his Holy Spirit inspired people to write many things in the Scriptures. He also inspired people to record human sin. So, there are records of the sins of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There are records of the sins of David and Solomon. This is another example where human sinfulness is recorded. Therefore, we can put that in the basket of what not to do and don't do it. Now, that's slightly better but it's still wrong. because when you look at a lot of these passages, these imprecatory passages, they're actually couched in a way in which it is part of the worship of God. It's in prayer and psalm and hymn and song that was taken up by the people of Israel in worship to God. The next way of understanding it is this. These people who wrote the psalms and passages like them, were real flesh and blood people, just like us. They felt things just as deeply as we do, in fact even more deeply perhaps, because they were more spiritual than we are. That's true most of the time. And in passages like this, you find them in direct communication with God, just giving voice to what's in their hearts. giving voice to the anger, to the fear, to the frustration, to the anxiety, to the depression, whatever it is. Now I think there's actually some element of truth in that, but I don't think it's the full truth. Because again, these things were taken up and used in Israel's worship. They were not simply personal expressions of someone's personal experience, even though they've come out of personal experience. And the fourth way, and this is the way we're going this morning, is this. However difficult these passages may seem, And whatever the specific meaning of Psalm 137 verses 8 and 9, God has actually recorded something here which is a significant revelation of his plan and purpose and a significant revelation of the way in which he himself deals with evil. And therefore we need to give attention to it not simply because it's a human sentiment expressed to God with which we might identify, but because God is saying something to us about His attitude towards evil and how He deals with it. So, we've got two main tasks this morning. One is to try and understand the context of Psalm 137. and then make some comment about the content of it. The context of it we have to understand in terms of the history of God's people and we also have to understand it in terms of the theology of God's people and we'll try and do both those things now straight away. Derek has said that he's heading up a series soon on Ezekiel and I'm sure he'll speak more about the setting of Ezekiel as he comes to it. But one of the great matters that occupied the prophets and the thinkers who are part of the leaders of the people of God, one of the great matters that occupied them is the events of history. See, we look at history and because of the way we've used history, learned history, we think history is just a series of events and somehow or other God watches on and he sees what's going to happen perhaps or he makes the best of a bad bunch. The prophets and the writers of Israel, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, knew that history was not just a spectator sport for God. Like, there's history, we're all running the race, God's a spectator watching. In reality, what happens in history is the arena in which God reveals himself and God enacts his word. History is not a random jumble of events. The rise and fall of nations, the collapse of empires, the invasion of one nation by another, the economic disaster that came upon people, the droughts, the floods, the fires, the plagues of locusts. These were not just interesting events historically, all the way through there are prophets who interpret what's happening. Now one of the great events that happened in the centre of Israel's existence was the event known as the Babylonian Exile, which Derek will tell you more about when you do a ZQ. Very, very quick reminder, you'll remember that once upon a time there was a king called David. He had a son called Solomon and after Solomon, in fact during the time of Solomon, everything started to go pear-shaped very quickly. After Solomon's death, the kingdom was divided and you had a group in the north under Jeroboam, the son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin. They were called Israel, about ten tribes up there. And then you had a group in the south, centred at Jerusalem and they worshipped God more or less properly in Jerusalem and that group of two and a half tribes was called Judah. So, you've got tribes in the north and a smaller group in the south centred on Israel, centred on Jerusalem, Israel in the north, Judah in the south. These are tiny little minnows in the great ocean of predators around there. Minnow tiny populations of small cities with no great military power after Solomon and at various points They were gobbled up by big fish. The first big fish who came down from the north and gobbled up the ten tribes in the top in Israel was Assyria. Those ten tribes were scattered and that land was laid waste and desolate and from that group eventually emerged the Samaritans that you read about in the New Testament. About 150 years later, Babylon came through and swallowed up Judah. It destroyed the temple, it raised the city walls, it broke up Jerusalem, scattered the people and that took place after a long siege. The prophets don't look at those things in Israel and say, oh, it's history unfolding according to mechanical principles. They look at those things and say, God is doing something. God actually sent Assyria to destroy Israel. In Isaiah it speaks about the king of Assyria being raised up as the club or the sword in God's hand. But then there are prophecies hundreds of years before the event which warned the king of Assyria that for your arrogance and haughtiness in warfare, for your brutality, for your selfishness, for your greed and for your idolatry, you're going to be judged and I'm going to raise up another group called the Chaldeans, also known as the Babylonians. It might take 150 years to do it but it's going to happen. And then hundreds of years before the event, God prophesied through Isaiah I will raise up another person called Cyrus and he will defeat the Babylonians. And as history unfolds, what the prophets and the writers in the Old Testament see is God is doing something. God is doing something amongst the nations to bring glory to his name and to save his people. You think, well it doesn't sound much like salvation so far, it's raising up swords and clubs and invasion and destruction. There is no salvation without judgement. God cannot save unless he judge. God cannot save his people unless he judge their sin. The evil that other nations do, Assyria, Babylon, whomever it is, the evil that they do is evil. It is inexcusable evil. But the fact that God has used them to bring judgement to his people does not make their evil something that escapes. God brings judgement to that. So, he judges the king of Assyria. He judges the king of Babylon. He judges Cyrus later on. and Darius and all of the others who followed after him. You think, well this is history, but it's history that you have to understand. Second thing is this, in that context of history, God had spoken to his people. He had spoken to them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but he had spoken to them very, very clearly through Moses and he had warned them through Moses in the covenant that they had entered into with God as God came to them and met them, he warned them through Moses, do not go after the gods of the other nations. Do not follow in their footsteps. Do not seek security where they seek security. Do not engage in the worship that they have. Because if you do, it will be judgement to you. If you do, it will destroy you. If you give yourself into the hands of those idolatrous forces, those idolatrous forces will rip your heart out. So don't go there. And they went there. So they got their heart ripped out. God had warned them. and more than just once he had continually sent his prophets. And finally the judgement when they took away the ten tribes in the north and 150 years later when Babylon came to Judah and destroyed Jerusalem, finally the judgement was they had never listened to the voice of God. That he'd given the word of God in Moses and in the written word. And they had been repeatedly given the word through the prophets. And the more God called to them, the more they went from him. And the more prophets he sent, the more they killed. And the more he spoke, the more they blocked their ears. So eventually, God's response is, you will not hear, so you will not be in a position where you will have prophets sent to you. you'll be taken away. He still sent them prophets while they were away, Ezekiel among them. And God had spoken through Jeremiah, through Isaiah, God spoke through prophets like Habakkuk to tell them what was to come if they persisted in their ways of rebellion. So that's why I said keep a finger in Jeremiah chapter 50 to 51 because in that passage you see one of a number of places where God speaks about the judgement he's going to bring on Babylon. Verse 1 of chapter 50, the word which the Lord spoke concerning Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans through Jeremiah the prophet. Declare and proclaim among the nations. Proclaim and lift up a standard. Do not conceal it. Babylon has been captured." Now at the time that Jeremiah said this, that's as stupid as saying America would never go bankrupt. It's as stupid as saying the British Empire would never fall. It's as crazy as saying Australia is lucky country that rides on the sheep's back and will always have it good. Babylon has been captured and notice the next bit, Bel has been put to shame, Marduk has been shattered, her images have been put to shame, her idols have been shattered. You think, who's Bel and Marduk and what are they doing there? And that leads us to the next thing we have to understand about the context, that is that there was no thought, no possibility, there is still not today but it was very clear back then, there was no thought or possibility of a nation conquering another nation except it be said that we have done it because our God is better than your God. Bell? also had other names in the Old Testament. You've heard of Baal, Baal and Bel, basically the same. He was the centre of the worship of Babylon and if you just go across to Jeremiah 50 verse 24, I set a snare for you and you were caught, O Babylon. While you yourself were not aware, you have been found and seized because you've engaged in conflict with the Lord." So the Babylonians come marching out, two by two, and they invade Jerusalem in the name of their God. and they destroy Jerusalem but in particular they destroy the temple. What's the assumption they make? Jeremiah chapter 51 verse 5. The assumption they make is that God has forgotten his people and that Bell has triumphed. For neither Israel nor Judah has been forsaken by his God, the Lord of hosts, although their land is full of guilt before the Holy One of Israel. What does that mean? It means as Assyria came down and took away the ten in the north, as Babylon came away and took away the remnant in Judah in the south, As that happened and they saw God's people suffer, God's temple torn down, the kings lose their thrones, the land invaded, the worship ceased, they would say, see, God doesn't care about his people. God doesn't care about you. God's not interested in you. Why don't you come and join us? We've got a better God, a bigger God, a stronger God. Invest your money with ours. And God says to Babylon and to the other nations around about, don't you dare think that I have ever abandoned my people. Don't you dare think that because I've brought discipline upon them and judged them, don't you dare think I've forsaken them. Because what you don't see, you nations worshipping your idols and other gods, what you don't see is that a father loves those who need disciplines. And I have not given them up to distraction. I have not given them up to final irrevocable judgement. I have hid my face from them temporarily so that they would love me truly as they ought. Don't think that my actions towards my people are because I hate my people, they're because I love them. Don't you dare think that my actions are because I've broken my covenant. My actions are to keep my covenant. which said that finally I will present you to me without spot or wrinkle and blemish and you will worship me with your whole heart and my judgments in the land and my judgments amongst my people and so that that would happen. And you think that Bell has done something, how wrong are you? I've set a snare for you. I've let you worship him and I've let you build yourself up and I've let you make a great tower to reach up to heaven so that you would reveal your evil and so that my people would be judged, so that they might remain faithful to me, so that your evil might come to nothing. That is the wisdom of God, it's not the wisdom of men. So, there's the context for what's happening here. These people have been through the most terrible siege warfare and destruction that is imaginable. If you want to read part of it, you can read Jeremiah's prophecy but also in particular the lamentations of Jeremiah. You can read that this afternoon at some point if you like. But there it tells us in various places how desperate the state of Jerusalem came. and how it was that mothers would argue over which child they were going to eat next because the siege just went on and on and on and on. And when Babylon came in, as was the habit at the time, they picked up the little ones and dashed their heads against the rocks. They ripped open the pregnant women. Why? Because Bel has triumphed over Yahweh. Our God defeats your God. Our God destroys your God's people. And wherever the prophets speak about what's going to happen to Babylon, to Assyria, to other nations, the thrust of what they say is, render to her as she has done to my people. Let Babylon experience what she caused my people to experience. It is in that sense the application of the Old Testament law, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But it's more than that. It's the way that God actually deals with evil in that He lets evil have its way. Do you remember what I said at the beginning and Ezekiel will come more to this and particularly Derek said you might find some bits shocking, don't read Ezekiel chapter 16. That's reverse psychology. It's to make you read Ezekiel Chapter 16. Because you'll come to Ezekiel Chapter 16 and you'll think, goodness me, when you give your heart to an idol, the language there is of rape, it's of pillage, it's of the most degrading acts of public violence. He says, that's what your idols do to you. but the idols themselves in revealing that terrible action, they themselves show themselves for what they really are and their judgement is that they reap that themselves finally. So, the context is of these people who have lost everything seemingly and who are being taunted by these people called the Babylonians who see their victory as a victory of their God over Yahweh's God, but the people had in mind the promises of God. See, it was not just that they'd come through a terrible siege and horrible suffering, everything that God had promised in the covenant was bound up with the land and the worship and the kingship and the temple and now they've lost it all. The king's had his eyes put out and seen his sons put to death in front of him. He's been taken off into captivity. The land's been invaded and given over as a waste place. The temple's been torn brick from brick and the worship has ceased. So their grief is not just that we have suffered personally, individually. The grief is that it seems as though everything that's promised in the covenant has been taken away and now moreover these terrible bellites, Marduk worshippers, they are saying, now sing one of your songs here. Let's see how well you go. Come on, get one of your guitars out and sing a nice happy chorus. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land because the land is where the covenant is, the temple. How can we worship here when all of our heart and mind and national life and identity is there. Alright, we'll sing a song. It's a song that the prophets have taught us and it goes like this. Babylon, you are doomed to destruction and blessed is the one who destroys you and destroys your children. It's the song that the Lord's taught us because we are simply praying to the Lord, do what you've said Lord, fulfil your covenant promise. And just as they sought to exterminate your name from the land by destroying our children, may it be that the name of Bel and Marduk and all the other demonic images that they worship may be obliterated from the land through their children's sacrifice and loss. So there's the context for it, there's the song they sing, that's why they sing it. Now our time's really going away but we need to finish with a few things here. Firstly, what we need to see is that God's purpose finally is to destroy evil in all its forms. It was interesting, just in the paper the other day, we're getting close to the time where the three men convicted of the Bali bombings are about to be executed in Indonesia. You've probably seen that on the news reports. And in the paper earlier in the week, there was an article by someone who was very closely involved in that event because of his role with the Foreign Affairs Department at that time. And he was saying in that article, I would not normally condone the death penalty, but in this case I do. There was one very telling phrase in that. He said, this has shown me what some people, notice, this has shown me what some people are capable of. If you're thinking about Psalm 137, if you're thinking about the evil of Babylon and you're still thinking in your mind, oh that's what some people are capable of and not me, you still haven't got to the heart of it. Because left to ourselves, every one of us, every single one would be in Babylon, not in Jerusalem. Left to ourselves, by ourselves, Bel and Marduk are what we want. Left to ourselves, by ourselves, the murder of God and his people is what we want. If you haven't seen that, you haven't begun to understand the Biblical doctrine of sin, evil and redemption. If you think that you are not capable then come to the Scriptures and find in the Spirit again a revelation of how wicked a human heart is. So when God comes to bring judgement to Babylon, he comes to bring judgement to what lies within each of us, but at the same time he comes to bring salvation to his people. Now, many places, Psalm 97, I don't know if you're doing that one in this series Derek, Fire goes out from before him and consumes his adversaries round about. That distraction, that judgement is at the same time salvation. So how do we understand that now for us here today in this place? You have to understand it in Christ, through Christ. Where did the destruction of evil and your sin happen? In Him. Is that true? Jesus frequently quotes, not from this psalm, but frequently quotes from other psalms which have got similar sentiments. Psalm 69 would be one. And this is the remarkable grace and inexpressible love of God. God in His Son, in effect, says destroy evil. God in His Son, looks at the whole wretched, wicked mess of humanity and all angelic principalities and powers that hate God and are opposed to His purposes. God looks at all of that and God says in Jesus Christ, yes, I will destroy it all. I will destroy the wickedness of the human heart. I will judge all hatred. I will judge everything that is idolatrous in your heart. I will destroy evil in the principalities and powers in heavenly places. I will judge the whole lot of it." And God says, I will judge it in myself. I'll stand in Babylon and I will stand saying, in Jesus Christ. Yes, Father. Let it be done to me as we have done to you. I will say in that place, effectively Jesus says, I will say in that place on the cross, pour your wrath out on all human sin. Pour your wrath out on the people who belong to you. But pour it on me. And that's what he's done. He went to the place that Psalm 137 prays for. And he's the only man who's gone there, finally. He has gone to the place of utter destruction outside the camp. Abandoned by God and man, bearing away sin in his body on the tree, becoming a haunt and howling wasteland of every evil thing clustered around him that day, gathering to himself all of the wickedness of all of our hearts and in that judgement what has happened? He said, because this judgement has come, you go back to your place. You go back to Jerusalem. That's what happened to these people. Seventy years in a strange land. Seventy years taunted, singing a song. Seventy years waiting and God raised up Cyrus, brought judgement to the King of Babylon and said, now you go back to Jerusalem. That's a picture of what's happened to you. God's taken you, all of your hard-hearted, idolatrous, bell-worshipping, Marduk-loving, God-hating heart and all of the evil that attaches to that and he's judged it and he said, now that judgement having been affected has cleansed you so you go back. That's why you gather in a church, because you've come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. You haven't escaped judgement, beloved. You're not one of the lucky few who's squiggled out of it somehow. God's going to miss your sin. You'll get all the others but he'll miss yours. No, he's got all of yours in Christ. You've not escaped the thing. But your judgement has come in him. The world's judgement has come in Him and you've seen that and it's broken the power of the idols in your heart and you said, yes Lord, my judgement is just in your Son and I'm free. So you too have been saved through judgement. So that's how we come to understand what Psalm 137 means for us and in Christ Truly we say, don't we, Lord destroy all evil. Isn't that what you pray every time you pray the Lord's Prayer? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But destroy it in love, destroy it in mercy like you've destroyed it in me. So come Lord Jesus. There's much more we could say. Our time's well over. You've been very patient.