Old Testament: Psa 137.4–6

To read the Bible in a year, read Psalms 136–138 on August 28, In the year of our Lord Christ 2022

By Don Ruhl 

The Jews were away from their land. They were in Babylon as exiles. Then the Babylonians asked the Jews to sing one of the songs of Zion. However, the psalmist answered with a broken heart: 

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!
If I do not remember you,
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.

– Psalm 137.4–6 

Perhaps you can understand his struggle. He remembered Jerusalem and he remembered their sin and how the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. He sat in Babylon away from his sacred city. 

Then he stated his love for Jerusalem, that if he forgot the beloved city, he wanted to lose his skills and he wanted to lose his ability to speak, for Jerusalem to him was more important than what he could do and what he could speak. 

Hebrews 12 teaches that the church is now what the Lord considers as Jerusalem and the kingdom, and Jesus taught that we should seek the kingdom first (Matthew 6.33). That means we should think of the church the way that the psalmist thought of Jerusalem. 

Questions: 

• Where is the church on your list of priorities? 
• What do you do to make the church better? 

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