Beeson podcast, Episode 429 Dr. Ken Mathews January 29, 2019 https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2019/By-and-Beyond-the-Rivers-of-Babylon Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. Our colleague, Dr. Ken Mathews, preached in chapel, Hodges Chapel, a few months ago, and he brought one of the most stirring sermons I think I have ever heard on one of the most difficult texts in the Bible, Psalm 137. Dr. Mathews teaches Old Testament in Hebrew. He's been at Beeson almost from the very beginning, taught generations of students here, dearly beloved teacher and colleague. What's he going to tell us about Psalm 137, Dr. Smith? Robert Smith: Dean George, I want to start off by just talking about the passion that's in his voice. It's a note of hopefulness. It's a note of rugged reality, realistic hope, Psalm 137. It's an engaging opening in that he is saying to us that there is security in Christ even though there's persecution. So, I like how he walks into this text without trying to tame it, application throughout the fabric of the text. The invitation to join the Psalmist by the rivers of Babylon and looking beyond the rivers of Babylon brings together, as he puts it, he says, "I can't help but think that the exiles must have said because God promised Abraham in the same place, Babylon, that he would get to the promise land, that he will bring us back to it." That's quite a jump to go back and to say, "The promises of God are sure, and because he did it for our father Abraham, he will do it for us." Robert Smith: Excellent historical context, showing us the pillaging and the raping that took place in 587 BC, 586. It's very conventual that God will keep his promise. Poetic license, "They must have said to themselves this and that," while protecting himself from injuring the text, if you will. It's a verse by verse progression, he helps us to see ourselves in the exiles. Being separated from Jerusalem and from the temple, and he concretizes it in such a way that he would say, "When they said, 'If I forget your Jerusalem, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, and weeping and hanging up their harps.'" He said it would be like a concert pianist having not the use of his hands because of arthritis, or like a preacher who has throat cancer who can't preach. That this doleful, this loneliness and being away from the temple is seen by something that we instantly can understand. Robert Smith: I think his application in the end is very strong, why we ought to pray for our enemies. Well, pray for them in order that they might repent, we also ought to pray in order that people who are already strong will be made stronger and carry the banner of Christ, and that we ought to pray for the enabling grace of God, so that we can bless our enemies, even when they persecute us. Eschatologically he ends, he starts with the river, he closes with the river, with a negro spiritual. "Let's go down to the river of the pray, study about that good old way, who shall wear a starry crown? Lord, show us the way." So this is really a tapestry, it's an interpenetration of sources throughout the bible and personal experiences, and he helps us define our place with the exiles, by the rivers of Babylon, but beyond the rivers of Babylon. Timothy George: Dr. Smith, if we go on every further I think you're going to break out preaching yourself. Robert Smith: Well, this is a message, Dean George, I'm touched. Timothy George: It's a great sermon, from a wonderful text by a dear friend and colleague, Ken Mathews, Psalm 137. Let's go to Hodges Chapel and listen to him preach. Ken Mathews: A reading from Psalm 137. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there, we hung up our liars, for there our 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? 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, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said "Lay it bare, lay it bare down to its foundations." O daughter of Babylon doomed to be destroyed, blessed be he who repays you with what you have done to us. Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock. Speaker 5: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, for he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just, and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? You therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. The word of the Lord. Speaker 6: Reading from Revelation Chapter 6, beginning in Verse 9. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain, for the word of God and for the witness they had born. They cried out with a loud voice, "O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed, as they themselves had been. This is the word of the Lord. Ken Mathews: By and beyond the rivers of Babylon. Almost 50 years ago as a teenager when I traveled in Europe and the middle east, as an American it was almost a guarantee for security. Today, when you travel through many places of the world, as an American, and certainly if you hold high the banner of Christ, it's almost a guarantee of insecurity. One of our graduates, Landon Bird, his father Neil, a former police officer, is head of security at our church, so it's unusual for parishioners to say something to the effect, "Well, Neil, are we secure today?" Or something like, "I'm glad to see you, because I feel much more secure." He told me his response is, "If you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, you are secure." That's the way it has always been, that's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be. Ken Mathews: Just this past March in East India there was a baptismal service attended by as many as 500 Christians. 20 Hindu radicals appeared with knives drawn. They threatened the Christians, they beat the pastor and others who tried to intervene, and they resulted in going to the hospital. In March, 15 years ago, Karen Watson was a Christian relief aid worker in the Northern region of Iraq. She and her four friends were returning from helping communicate, learn about how to secure clean water, and as they were driving north to Mosul, a car pulled beside them with drawn guns and killed all of them. Karen wrote a note before she left the States, and it was entitled 'Open in case of death'. This is what she had to say, among other things, "Keep sending missionaries out, keep raising up fine young pastors," then in closing she stated simply, "There is no joy outside of knowing Jesus and serving him. His glory is my reward." Ken Mathews: I'm speaking today to an audience of young men and women who have committed themselves to the service of Christ, and others who are holding high the banner of Christ. We live in this kind of world, and that's the kind of world I want to speak to. Oppression, persecution certainly does come here in the States; you may have been rejected by your parents and friends, you may have been ridiculed by others, perhaps even having lost a job, having lost certain kinds of opportunities, and I do not in any way want to diminish that, but today I'm primarily talking about those around the world who are in most danger, living in hostilities, and I want us to remember what Jesus said regarding persecution in the Beatitudes. He said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted, for righteousness sake, there shall be the kingdom of heaven." Ken Mathews: That's what I'm talking about, and I want to be clear about. We are talking about people who are persecuted for the cause of Christ, and not for any other. He may be near, sitting in a Birmingham jail with Martin, it may be far, sitting in a Turkish prison with Andrew. Whether near or far, we know that like the Psalmist, we too will be sitting by the rivers of Babylon. The apostle Paul, when he wrote to the Corinthian church, he said, "if one member suffers, we all suffer." And this morning the Psalmist is inviting us to join him by the rivers of Babylon, and to suffer with him, in his deepest despair. But also, he wants us with the eyes of faith to join him in looking beyond the rivers of Babylon, to a time of restoration and return, as history tells us, and the bible as well, that it did occur. Ken Mathews: As you know from reading about the ancient past, when these great empires would move and stamp out great cities and nations, they were buried beneath the sands of time, rarely were they ever heard from again. Only millennia later did archeologists uncover their civilization, learn their languages, witness their great edifices, see their artwork, and read their great literature. But not so with Israel. Israel had a living God. You see, when there is death, there's no hope, but when there is life with the living God, we can look beyond the rivers of Babylon and see the at hope in that restoration God gave Ezekiel, also a captive, a vision. A vision of dry bones, and the question must have come to the Psalmist, as it comes to us, can these dry bones live again? And this is what the Lord said on that occasion, "I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live. And I will place you in your own land, then you will know that I am the Lord, I have spoken, and I will do it." Ken Mathews: What had occurred in the life of ancient Israel was a national and also theological crisis. King Nebuchadnezzar and his father rampaged from Southern, what is today Iraq. Moving north and west and then south, covering the fertile crescent, and as Habakkuk describes it, they would cast their nets and bring in like fish, cities, nations. They were known for their territory and galloping horses, and when they approached like all ancient civilization did in those old days, they would rape and pillage the land itself to feed their armies, because besieging a city would occur two to three years. The people inside would starve to death, and then once the walls were breached, there was no such thing as civilian, there was no such thing as collateral damage. All were subject to the wrath and anger of the armies, who would kill, who would destroy, who would dismember. They would take up the young and they would transport them to far away Babylon, and there with the young, like Daniel and his three friends, they would reprogram them to forget their homeland and their heritage, and pick up and absorb and become like Babylonians. Ken Mathews: That was the risk that came with the national crisis. The theological crisis was simply this; the people of Israel had proclaimed that God had made promises to them. Was he good on his promises? They remembered long, long before the stories that had been told of their father Abraham, who was in that region when God called him to go to a land he did not know, and that he would make of him a great nation, and he would make of him a great name, and those who blessed Abraham would be blessed, but those who cursed Abraham would be cursed. Here they bury the waters of Babylon. What had happened to those promises? But those of the righteous and the faithful who could look beyond the rivers, who could rest beyond the promises of God, they must have said to themselves, "If God can call our father out of that, then surely he can do the same for us, and he will also call us home." Ken Mathews: In this opening paragraph of our passage in Psalm 137, I want us to remember as we look at this passage that the depth of his sorrow must have been truly so deep as to have created within him a fresh, a raw feeling of anger. An angry man, yes, but I don't find him to be a person who was only looking for personal revenge. On the contrary, I find him to be a godly man, a righteous man. If Israel were to be extinguished, if its light were to be snuffed out, let me ask you, where might Isaiah's proclamation of a light to the gentiles would be? What people across the ancient world would be able again to hold high the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Israel had to survive so there might come from it the savior long promised. And so as we think with him in these verses, remember now what is at stake, and that is the prosperity and the realization of the gospel, of the descendant to come, the Lord Jesus Christ, our savior. Ken Mathews: Now, it's actually the last verse that has proven to be so difficult. It's very hard to hear, and it's probably much more difficult to read, because it crossed purposes it seems and our Christian sensitivities. So often you'll find it's avoided, this Psalm, or ignored, or even disavowed, but if we really believe what Paul said to Timothy; all scripture is God breathed and profitable for edification and for equipping us to be better servants of Christ, there must be something here that will edify us. There's something here, if we look closely, that will build us in our Christian commitment in our witness to the nations. Ken Mathews: What was he doing down at the rivers of Babylon? "We sat down and wept," he says. I'm reminded of the apostle Paul and his companions when they arrived in Philippi, and we are told that on the sabbath day they went outside the city gates. Some suppose that there was not a synagogue, and so the people would gather at the river and worship and pray, and the text tells us that the apostle Paul sat, and he must have shared the gospel because it says that God opened the heart of Lydia, the woman of selling purple, and she received the gospel. Perhaps the Psalmist and his colleagues have gathered at the river for the purpose of prayer and worship on their sabbath. Ken Mathews: These may also have been Levitical musicians. Levitical priests who served the temple at Zion. If Babylon was the epitome of evil, then Zion would have been the epitome of God's presence, God's holiness, the one who was to be worshiped and praised, and that's why he has in mind that there was a loss of joy as his mockers would come and ridicule. Notice what it says here, "Our tormentors joyfully in mirth saying 'sing us one of the songs of Zion'" If these were Levitical priests, then they would have been performers, they would have been composers. It would have been the way that they understood their role in the place of God's kingdom and how it working. In their minds would have been recurring again and again what they had heard, what they had witnessed in worship, what they had heard, what they had witnessed in the great pilgrimages to that place, which represented in their minds and hearts the very presence of God. The center of the universe, the center of the cosmos. Ken Mathews: So when it speaks of singing the songs of Zion, there is in the songs of Zion a theological statement, and that is that the Lord God is the God of all the earth. He is the almighty God who has appointed his vice regent, David and his progeny, to be the anointed servants of the Lord, to represent him in the earth. And Zion also spoke of how there would be a day, in all the beauty of Zion in its temple, there would be streaming the nations to bow before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Ken Mathews: Notice in the next paragraph here we have a vow of allegiance. "And there, how shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" Here he's talking about far more than a cartographer's placement of a Babylon or a Jerusalem. He's talking about what has occurred is of such a traumatic nature that it would be dishonoring to God to compose songs of joy, songs of Zion, and that they must set aside, as they have done, their worship instruments. And then he makes this vow of allegiance, he turns, if you notice, attention from the collective we to himself personally, and he calls upon God's curses upon himself should he fail to worship the Lord. "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill, and may not again there be the singing of my mouth if I ever forget you, abandon you." Become a part of the inducements that were surely there. Ken Mathews: There's this mistaken understanding that these people were held captive in a prison. No, when the Jews came, they were given opportunity. We've recovered tablets from the period, 200 in fact, that describe how the Jewish people were involved in commerce, agriculture, and as history has told us, there was a minority that returned to Israel. The majority stayed in Babylon where there was the possibility of further legacy, and fruition, and prosperity. Is it any wonder then that we have what is known as the Babylonian Talmud? But this Psalmist says, "I will not compromise. Oh God, may I never compromise." Can you imagine what it would have been like for him to no longer perform? To no longer compose? It would be like the classical guitarist, or orchestral harpist whose hands are now so decrepit with arthritis they can't perform anymore. Or the great vocalist who has been robbed of her voice because of cancer of the throat, or a pastor shepherd who can no longer shepherd his flock. That was his reason for being, that was his reason for existence, that was his vocation in life. Now lost. Ken Mathews: Oh, how despairing it must have been to the deepest regions of his soul. Oh, how he must have suffered. But notice the last part of that Verse 6, "I must put at the highest point," like Zion itself, "at the highest point my joy in Jerusalem." I'm going to great lengths to try for us to feel and sense his sorrow by the rivers, but for every believer, for every Christian, though there is sorrow and oppression, persecution, we know there is yet something deeper, deeper than our sorrow, and that is a quiet confidence and peace, a true joy that resides us because we know what is beyond the rivers of Babylon. Ken Mathews: Then finally, this last three verses, as he turns his full attention now in prayer, now he's calling upon God in a way that we as Christians find do difficult to read and to accept. What is it we can find here that can be helpful to us? Well, let me make it clear. As we find so often in the New Testament by Jesus himself where he says, "Love your enemies." In fact, we just simply recited, and we do it almost every Lord's day, the Lord's prayer. Forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Or as the apostle Paul has written, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'" Ken Mathews: What is it that he's asking for here? He's praying for justice, for what is right. Too many times we find ourself so approving of, so proclaiming the mercy of God, we blind ourself to the justice of God, or we are so quick to think about the justice of God, we blind ourself to the mercy of God. And so yes, we pray for the justice of God, but we pray for it in a different manner, in a different way. Like Jesus said in Luke in Nazareth, you remember, after reading the Isaiah scroll, he said, "Now is the time for proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor." And I would say the same to us; this is the day of salvation, this is the day of opportunity for the nations, that they might hear, and see, and repent, and stream to Zion as they worship the one true descendant of the Messianic lineage, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Ken Mathews: We can't be too harsh in our judgment against the Psalmist, after all, all he is doing is repeating the words of God himself. In Isaiah when he delivers the oracle of judgment that will befall the Babylonians, this is what he says. The Lord says, "Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes. Their houses will be plundered, and their wives ravaged." He understood from the Lord's proclamations that there will be a restoration, that the nation of Babylon must fall to another, and it did occur by the twin power of the Medes and the Babylonians. The Medes and the Persians, rather, and they returned. So how are we to pray? I remember those sons of thunder, James and John, when the Samaritan village had rejected Jesus. "Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" We're told that he rebuked them and turned away. What are we to pray for then? Ken Mathews: I think first and foremost we've got to pray with the Psalmist that the person under persecution be first and foremost strong, and continuing, and persevering, and holding high the banner of Christ. We also pray for the nations to repent, repenting in a different way. Slain not by the sword, slain by the spirit, that they may come to repentance, and then I would say let us pray for the enabling grace that we will all need to bless those who are enemies, those who have persecuted us. Ken Mathews: Would you join me in hearing a gospel spiritual that has come to mean a great deal to me? And in this I close. Ken Mathews: As I went down in the river to pray, studying about the good old way, and who shall wear the starry crown? Good Lord, show me the way. O sisters, let's go down, let's go down, come on down. O sisters, let's go down, down in the river to pray. As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the robe and crown? Good Lord, show me the way. O brothers, let's go down, let's go down, come on down. Come on brothers, let's go down, down in the river to pray. Ken Mathews: As I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the starry crown? Good Lord, show me the way. O fathers, let's go down, let's go down, come on down. O fathers, let's go down, down in the river to pray. And as I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the robe and crown? Good Lord, show me the way! O mothers, let's go down, let's go down; don't you want to go down? Down in the river to pray. Ken Mathews: As I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the starry crown? Good Lord, show me the way! O sinners, let's go down, let's go down, come on down. O sinners, let's go down, down in the river to pray. As I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the robe and crown? Good Lord, show us the way! Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast, with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the podcast at our website, BeesonDivinity.com. 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