The Rivers Of Babylon Series

INTRODUCTION — THE PSALM WE RARELY READ OUT LOUD

There are parts of the Bible you read with a smile, parts you read with a tear… and then there are parts you read and immediately wonder, “Did God really put that in there?” Psalm 137 is one of those places.

It is Scripture at its rawest.

It is faith without makeup.

It is spirituality without airbrushing.

It is the cry of a people who had seen too much, lost too much, and suffered too deeply to sing polite songs anymore. It is the prayer of those whose world burned to the ground while the promises of God still echoed in their ears.

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept.”

That is not a metaphor.

It is not a figure of speech.

It is people collapsing on the banks of a foreign river with nothing left to hold onto but their memories.

And the strange gift God gives us in Psalm 137 is this: He tells us He is not offended by honest pain. He is not embarrassed by our questions. He is not shocked by our anger. He is not irritated by our grief. He is the God who allows wounded people to speak, and then preserves their words forever in His book.

That is already a sermon before we even reach verse 2.

Psalm 137 is not a gentle Psalm. It is not a Hallmark card. It is not a quiet prayer spoken in a sanctuary with stained glass and polished pews. It is a prayer shouted through tears by people who have been dragged from their homes, seen their Temple desecrated, and carried chains around their wrists.

This Psalm is not for the people who want neat theology.

This Psalm is for the people who say,

“God, if You want my heart, I need You to hear it all.”

Let’s walk through it.

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I. “BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT DOWN AND WEPT” — THE IMAGE OF TRAUMA

The Psalm opens with geography, but it speaks the language of trauma.

The rivers of Babylon were irrigation canals that wound around the empire. They were the places where the exiles were taken to work, build, dig, and labor under forced servitude. And on those riverbanks the Jewish captives would sit at the end of the day, exhausted, dehydrated, grieving, overwhelmed, and broken.

If you’ve ever been in a place where your life changed so drastically that you could barely recognize yourself, you understand this Psalm more than you know.

The exiles didn’t just lose a war.

They lost their identity.

They lost their homeland.

They lost their sense of belonging.

They lost the Temple—the symbol of God’s presence.

They lost their entire world.

So they wept.

And God said, “Write that down. My people need to know that tears are not weakness. They are worship.”

There are moments in life when the strongest faith you can express is the faith that sits down and weeps. There is a holiness in honest sorrow. There is a sacredness in lament. And Psalm 137 tells us that God does not reject people who cry in foreign places.

Maybe your Babylon wasn’t an ancient empire.

Maybe your Babylon was a divorce, a diagnosis, a betrayal, a funeral, a failure, or a season when you didn’t know if God remembered your name.

But here is the promise:

God sits on the riverbank with you.

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II. “OUR CAPTORS DEMANDED SONGS” — WHEN SUFFERING MEETS HUMILIATION

Verses 2 and 3 give us the most cruel detail of the story.

The Babylonians said:

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

This was not a request.

This was mockery.

They were saying,

“Where’s your God now?”

“You used to sing so loudly—why so quiet?”

“Go on—sing. Entertain us. Praise that God who couldn’t save you.”

Pain is hard enough.

Humiliation is worse.

And some of you know exactly what that feels like.

It is the pain inside your home coupled with judgment from the outside.

It is the grief of loss mixed with people who don’t understand it.

It is the heartbreak of your own Babylon accompanied by voices that don’t respect your suffering.

The exiles hung their harps on the willow trees—not because they didn’t believe anymore, but because their hearts had been crushed.

This is the part of the Psalm where faith feels exhausted, not abandoned.

There is a difference.

Sometimes faith grows quiet because grief grows loud.

And God is patient with that.

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III. “HOW CAN WE SING THE LORD’S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND?” — THE CRISIS OF WORSHIP

Here lies the theological center of the Psalm.

It isn’t simply:

“We are hurting.”

It is:

“God, how do we worship You now?”

This is the question of every exile: