You're in a situation in Babylon here where you're away from your home. And the last time you saw your home was when it was being burned by the Babylonians, when your fields were being destroyed. And worst upon worse is when the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. And if you were an ancient Jew here in this situation, you were one, for it was mainly the Jewish ruling class who were exiled. You were one who saw all that you had worked for, the work of your hands, your vineyards. If you worked in God's temple, your very place of employment destroyed, everything shattered. And now, you're by the canals, and you're by buildings made by pagan Gentiles who do not love God. The buildings may look great, but they're just vapid emptiness. Because at least the building that you knew was for God's glory built by King Solomon. And of course, this is to put you in the position of what it would have been like to be in exile here. And chiefly, it's not just about the physicality of the fields, of the homes, and even the temple as grand as it was. For in Jesus' day, He said of the temple that indeed, of the second temple, that not one stone could be left on another. But chiefly, it was missing the God who enabled the temple to be built, missing the God who dwelt in that temple, missing the land of His provision with the focus on Him for the glory of God. That is what the truly pious Jew was to be about. That is what they were taught in their history. And so, by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. It was the remembrance of the King of Zion, King who was to come. And in our day, chiefly in view, King Jesus here. Exile. From the physical blessings they knew, but why were they exiled? Why did they weep when they remembered Zion on a spiritual level? And the reason is that they knew. It was their fault why they were there. Even back in Deuteronomy, God had prophesied that if the people sinned, they would be exiled for punishment. They remembered that, and of course, prophetically speaking, Moses' words came true. They knew that it was because of judgment and discipline for their nation. And in that sin, Isaiah 59, 2 talks about that our sins have separated us from God, that communion that they had, not just from the physical blessings, but the spiritual depths of communion are lost. There is a season of withdrawal, of deprivation on their inside. Indeed, it's God's painful discipline for their sin, for no discipline seems painful, pleasant, the Scriptures say, but it is painful. And it's like looking in the mirror and saying, who did this? You did. And of course, this is for the people who grossly sinned. God warned them to stay away from their idols. God warned them not to give heed to it, but to pay attention chiefly to Him. Not to go to Egypt, not to look for any other nation for aid, even to surrender to the Babylonians and they would be spared. God warned them through Jeremiah time after time after time. And yet they did not. and what they feared the most, the sudden disaster that overtakes us when the wicked are wicked. That's what happened. They sadly had to fear that. So they were exiled for their sins. But there was also a class of people who perhaps were walking closely with God, You think of Daniel of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that shared in the trials and the discipline of the people, but they themselves had hearts devoted to the Almighty. You know, Daniel prayed morning and night, feared God. He was not willing to fall to pagan ways, and yet he suffered too. Some of the Jewish elite had this experience of different food, different cultural norms, different pressures to conform. And they suffered too. And indeed, Jesus said even to the godly that in this world we will have trouble, but to take heart that He has overcome the world. And I want us to remember that now. You may be saying to yourself, this is not anywhere close to my experience. I live in the comfortable United States. I live in a land where none of this is happening. But even though our situation be not one of great deprivation, we go through trials day in and day out. You know, I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon the difficulty of living in this nation, the wickedness we see around us. It's hard to go anywhere without media bombarding us with ungodly things. Just this week, Tyler Lopez sent me a great article by Tony Reinke, which talks about just the constant stimulation of smartphones and ungodly media on them, and how we can just... We can be in exile. We want the good, but yet all of these things are attempting to take us to another land internally. It's kind of an exiling experience. We know that we can feed on God and the Lord Jesus Christ, yet all of these things are ways that we suffer. And then, of course, You yourself may be suffering because of sin. You may be suffering and getting what you deserve in discipline, whether it's due to a loss of a job, whether it's due simply to a feeling of distance from God yourself. We go through many of these things because we have not meditated on God's Word. We have not cherished Him in our hearts. Indeed, we have had idols. And so a sense of God's nearness, we may feel exiled from that. delighting in other things above the Lord." He's warned us in His Word. He's warned us that these things would come. And yet we ourselves look up and wonder how we got here. How did we get here? How did I get into this pit of despair? How did I get into this pit of depression? And where is God? And it may be that you've done righteously. It may be that you've striven to walk with God in yet difficult situations. It's mentioned that Dr. Scipione and others have cancer, a PCA pastor. In so many ways, it may not be our suffering direct result of our own sin, but just the common lot of the sinful world in which we live, that situation, we struggle and we groan And we wonder why we are where we are. But the trials that God sends are so that we might grow in faith and holiness and righteousness. He sends us these trials so that we might look to Him, look to Him in our despair, in our difficulty. And so, as such, you yourselves probably are not strangers to this exile. And so those are the trials of mourning that happens. And our sins often should cause us to mourn. James tells us to weep and mourn and wail over our iniquities. That is normal as part of God's discipline that we might be restored to Him. And so we may mourn ourselves just like the people did due to the suffering that we experienced. But there's also trials of torment. We've mentioned trials of mourning, but there's trials of torment. And it says in verses 2 through 4, on the willows there we hung up our lyres, for there are captors required of us songs. And our tormentors mirth saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? Mocking almost, is it not? The captors required of us songs, sing us one of the songs of Zion." The Babylonians that brought them there, they looked into them and said, sing us something happy, right at the very time when they did not want to be happy. Right at the time when the very thought of singing, sitting by that river, they just wanted to put their lyres up on the tree and be done with it. They were not in that mood. And also, even if, of course, God's Word commanded them to sing, but being commanded to sing by someone who doesn't want you to sing in a wrong context for our worship of God should come in adoration to Him. But these people were commanding them to sing, these Babylonians, for their own entertainment. It's as if it's like tormented Saul. David, play me something to relieve me of my internal pain and angst, you could imagine him saying. You know, the Babylonians glutted and sated with all of their luxury. Sing me something to distract me. Sing me something for my idolatrous heart. Take the holy psalms of God. That's what's meant there in the Hebrew, is the psalms of God, to take the holy songs and just sing it for me to enjoy, with no thought of God's glory and delight. Any pious Jew And us today who sing the Psalms of Christ, we hear that sort of thing? We do not. We wouldn't want to do that, to go to a local pub perhaps where there's debauchery or other things like that going on and just say, oh, just sing me a couple of hymns here and be done with it. Think about that. Would you want to do that? The answer is probably no, unless you're proselytizing, unless you're trying to share the good news of the Lord Christ. But it is incongruous, as Alexander said, to sing in such a holy way with such unholy means. And I don't know about you, but when you're at your very, very deep pit of despair, sometimes you're at a place where you can't even summon the words of songs. There are times when, yes, the Lord does command us to sing when we are feeling low, because singing and praising Him because we're filled with Him, it helps. But there are also those times of such blackness All we can do is wait and sit in silence with God, where we cannot do anything else but wait on Him. And that is the nature of torment. When we're in that place and people tell us, oh, just cheer up, why don't you? Cheer up, be happy. Well, you can't be happy. And you can imagine that the Babylonians who boasted in their gods, you may remember how this was a different situation, The Assyrians came up and were very, very boastful, begging the people to surrender and saying, it's not the gods of our path greater than the God of Jerusalem. Well, you could imagine the Babylonians being besieging Jerusalem. We won. Our gods are so-called greater, they might say. And therefore, you could imagine them telling them to sing out of an idle curiosity. and their view of a God who was weaker, but of course that was their view. Our God and their God, the God of the Bible was stronger. Here I think of Psalm 42, where the man is longing for God, but yet his enemies taunt him all night saying, where is your God? For torment in your own lives, in exile perhaps, for your sins. Others might perhaps mock you. If you are strong in profession, for instance, and you have fallen, if you've given way at the workplace to maybe some sin, some holy man you are, they might say. Do what you will now. And then also, simply for being holy. I mentioned Daniel earlier. Simply for being holy, they may mock you. They may torment you. Preacher, holy roller, any number of epithets they might level at you. That's part of the torment that you have in your present exile. In this world, living as a Christian, that goes with it. Jesus tells us, blessed are you when you're persecuted, blessed are you when people mock you and revile you, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. He knows that was going to be a common lot that we would endure. And also, he also said that a servant is not above his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. And so, that is to be a common lot that we have as believers. We all go through this sort of torment, whether it's due to our own sins or whether it's due to following the Lord Jesus Christ. And we've seen tons of this, the captors of the Christians in the Middle East today. You think of ISIS beheading Christians. We see so much of this in our world. Such is the affliction that God's people endure, but they also endure trials of forgetfulness. I mentioned that Babylon was a place of splendor, a place of a feeling glutted by all kinds of worldly desires. We recently finished talking in the book of Revelation, Pastor Lou talking about Babylon of having ships and merchant cargos, all kinds of wares, commerce, industry. And of course, it had temples, it had grand buildings, ziggurats. You can see the remnants of Babylon's walls today. All of this greatness, and you think of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being taught astronomy, all the wisdom of the Babylonians. They had foods and meats sacrificed better than the buffets that we have in the United States, I might imagine, in that royal court. Verse 5, in this pain around so much, the psalmist says, if I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you. All this is to say, surrounded by all of these things, surrounded by the so-called splendor of Babylon, surrounded by tormentors who would say, forget about your pain, we've got good things here. It was a temptation to forget the deeper, quieter waters of the Spirit, but the more enduring and eternal joys of following Jehovah. It's tempting. We're tempted. The eyes of man are never satisfied. We're tempted by all of these passing fancies. And of course, tempted to worship in a way contrary to God's Word. Daniel being promised so many things, but ultimately asked to bow down before Nebuchadnezzar to that statue, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being called to worship false gods, and yet they refused. All of these things, if they did these things, they would gain perhaps greater preferment in the king's courts. And of course, As we see in Romans 1, those who give way to idolatry, those who give way to these lusts, they fall prey to forgetting God, no longer acknowledging Him, and then becoming debased. It's a very negative, terrible place to be. Idolatry. If we forget God and turn to the things of this world, It's a numbing thing. It says in Isaiah, excuse me, Psalm 115, 8, that those who make idols become like them. So around all those idols in Babylon, the people would be tempted to look at the external and not at the internal. In the book of Hosea, chapter 6, it talks about Ephraim being a silly dove, and leave Ephraim alone, for he is joined to idols. In other words, God's judgment on Ephraim. for being so wed to these idols and being forgetful, Ephraim was numb. He had forgotten the great God. And of course, ultimately, ironically, the very king who promoted this idolatry, Nebuchadnezzar, became numb and he was made, in Daniel chapter 4, like a mere beast of the field. All of this is a picture for our souls and what happens in this psalm. The psalmist remembered the numbing effects of idolatry. He said that if he engaged in idolatry, let his right hand forget its skill and let his tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. One of the greatest judgments and disciplines is when God gives us over to our sin for a season, if there be a reprobate for eternity. But I remember talking about So many times in Scripture where people wonder and, you know, David when he sinned with Bathsheba, Nathan had to confront him and wake him up. It's as if he was just oblivious to so much that he had done. He just kept going from one sin to the next sin to the next sin. And that's a great discipline when our conscience has become hard. That's what happens when we sin, when we don't listen to conscience, when it knocks, when the Holy Spirit also to the invitation of Jesus and our numbness and our lukewarmness wants us to come sup with Him. And yet we don't. We go on. And the more we go on, the harder our hearts get. And ultimately, we fall into some great discipline and some great consequence. We fall on our backs and we look up and we say, where is God? We can be a lot like the people in Isaiah 30 when they were tempted to go to Egypt, and God told them, returning in rest, you shall be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. And then God says, if you don't do this, you'll be like a signal on a hill. In other words, you'll be so vulnerable for not trusting Me, if you forget Me, that you'll forget how to fight, you'll forget how to run. It's a serious place to be. Are you at that place? Are you at that place where perhaps my words tonight mean nothing? You're trying to get through this sermon. You're just trying to get through the next thing. Perhaps life for you has become all about pragmatics. There's no depth. There's no joy in the things of the Lord. You're giving way from one sin to another, hidden secret sins that you have not confessed. Inwardly, you know you're going worse and duller. And you've lost the luster that she once knew. Well, the book of Acts say that times of refreshment can come from the Spirit of the Lord. Times of renewal can come. The Scriptures bid us say, turn and we will be turned. God can turn you. God and all of His power can do that. Take your forgetfulness. your torment and your weeping and mourning for sin and make it a place of joy, a place of springs. And that leads me to our second main point this evening, that Jehovah's people overcome when God is their highest joy. They overcome when God is their highest joy. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. And it says in verse 6, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Jerusalem above my highest joy. As at the beginning, it doesn't refer to the mere physical city of Zion, Jerusalem, but it refers to the Lord who dwelt in Zion. and turning to Him. Because you may remember in their point of exile, it was alluded to in one of the prayers tonight. In their point of exile, Isaiah 40, Comfort ye, O comfort ye My people. Basically, God says, speak tenderly to Jerusalem, for her sentence has been served. In that sentence, God spoke a word of comfort, knowing that they needed to be lifted out of where they were. That it was His comfort and His comfort alone, for His glory, not because of His namesake that would renew them. And so that is what God communicates to us. Though they've been doled out by their idolatries and sins, they who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings of eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and they will not faint. And that is what contemporaneous to this passage, or shortly thereafter, what God was to remind his people of. And in their sin, looking up in Lamentations, that great, great book of pain and suffering, but in chapter 3 it comes with that great eclipse of light. It talks about how the faithfulness of the Lord is new every morning. As they were mourning over their sins, they looked up and saw what God was doing. and that the fact that He would act again, that He would liberate, they remember the promises that Moses foretold that they would be brought back to the land if they trusted and looked to Jehovah. And that is what is in view here, remembering these things. And this has particular application for us as well. Many other scriptural promises for us, when He was rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem, Nehemiah remembered that the joy of the Lord was his strength. And of course, Jesus bids us, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you as well. In our exiles, when we have faced spiritual punishment for our sins, when we look up and we see these terrible things in our souls, God bids us look up to Him, to Jesus Christ for renewal. who, of course, is one with Jehovah mentioned in Psalm 137. That is what He bids us do. And in so many other places, we know that when we are empty, when we mourn, we will be comforted. When we thirst for righteousness, we will be filled. Many, many promises in Scripture. And ultimately, Psalm 16, when we seek the Lord first, the boundary lines will fall for us in pleasant places. In other words, loving God We regain the ability not to turn to idolatry, to not look to the creature, to look to these circumstances and externals and flashy things to get us numb and lost, but we look to the one who gives a greater light and radiance to all of these things. We look to the one who is Jesus Christ. And I'm here to tell you this evening, that is what is in view here as we conclude this message, in a sense, We are all exiles in this world. We desire a better country as Abraham did. But our home is in heaven. A dwelling place eternal with God. Though our earthly tent in which we dwell be destroyed, we have a building with God eternal in the heavens. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. And so I want us to remember that this evening. That that is what the Lord Jesus Christ came to do. He came because He knew we were lost and undone in this world. He knew that there was an angst that we could not solve. He knew there was a thirst that could not be satisfied. And He came that we might have life abundant, that even though physically we may continue in exile in this world and will ultimately only have home in heaven, He came, He who overcame the world that we might know how to live with the spiritual richness, even though everything around us seems to be falling apart. And so far from preaching doom and gloom this evening, and though we rehearse some of the gloom and pain caused by sin, I'm preaching a message of hope, I'm preaching a message of encouragement that by looking to Jesus Christ, you might be saved. Because if you have never known comfort, if you have never known what it means to have peace in the midst of your exile, if you've never known that, If you've never known the comfort of the Holy Spirit, how to rehearse the promises of God, that promise can be for you. If you turn from your sins, turn from your belief that all is black, and turn and trust in Jesus Christ, trust in His shed blood to wash away your sins, to wash away your inward sense of alienation. Though your physical alienation endures in this life, you will have hope, you will have a promise. And no matter what trials you're going through tonight, brothers and sisters in this world, whether it's all the folks with cancer, missionaries feeling persecuted, despondency, marital problems, look to Christ. He is your solution. Look to Him as your highest joy. Look to Him as your greatness. Has Christ in you the hope of glory? And you will dwell with Him richly. And your sorrow will be turned into joy. Amen. Let's close in prayer. Lord God, we do thank You for Your Word. We do thank You in every way that Your Word, indwelling with You, that You are our highest joy. And in you, all the boundary lines fall in pleasant places. And you take our mourning and turn it into laughter. You take our tears and turn them into joy. Lord God, do that for us. Help us to search our hearts. Cleanse us of any defilement that is in us. Cleanse us of forgetfulness and idolatry. And restore us and make us glad and happy. And Lord, also buoy us up in our exiles to one day we are ultimately home with you. We do pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. are.