When we think of the church
“By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down and wept, When we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it We hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, And our tormentors mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ How can we sing the LORD'S song In a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth If I do not remember you, If I do not exalt Jerusalem Above my chief joy. Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom The day of Jerusalem, Who said, ‘Raze it, raze it To its very foundation.’ O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, How blessed will be the one who repays you With the recompense with which you have repaid us. How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones Against the rock.” (Psalms 137)
On May 14, 2009, I read the article under the title of ‘300 Church Personnel, Emergency Declaration for Self-Promotion of Korean Churches.’ Under the heading ‘Declaration for Pastoral Evangelism and Self-purification,’ eight things were declared: (1) Repent of being unfaithful to evangelical values, (2) Reflect on failure to love one another and of the church division and conflict, (3) Reflect on the moral hazards of pastors, and maintain a higher level of morality, (4) Realize the problem of the church's capture of growing supremacy, resulting in cross-church polarization, (5) Endeavor to be the authority of spirituality more than the degrees and honors of the world, (6) Strive to exert personal piety and socially healthy influences, (7) Accomplish the clean church politics on an evangelical basis, (8) The church will endeavor to be the light and salt of society (Internet). As I read these eight emergency declarations, I thought they were precious. If the churches live according to this declaration, the church will be able to glorify the Lord. In particular, I think the first of the eight declarations is the key. In other words, we must repent of being unfaithful to the evangelical values. A more specific statement of this first declaration is: ‘Preach the gospel of salvation that was accomplished by the blood of Jesus Christ that the apostles handed down to us and continue the Reformed tradition of the Reformers in martyrdom. The church, built on this gospel, is a soul-saving hospital and a school of learning God. However, we are committed to have deep self-reflections about whether we have focused more on worldly success than on the value of the gospel, whether we have pursued higher moral and ethical lives, and whether we have done our best to love our brothers and care for our neighbors. Through this, we commit ourselves to live faithfully according to evangelical values‘(Internet). It is a declaration that I cannot disagree with. In particular, I agree that we must repent that the church has focused more on worldly success than on the value of the gospel. What do you think we Christians should do when we think of the church? What should we do when we think of the church?
First, we must weep when we think of the church.
Look at Psalms 137:1 – “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” The psalmist wept with the Israelites who were captivated by the Babylonians and who sat by the rivers of Babylon when he remembered Zion that was destroyed by the Babylonians. Why did he weep remembering Zion? The reason is because he longed for the grace of God's restoration (Park). When the Israelites sinned against God, God told them that they would be in their low estate, that is, captives to Babylon (136:23). Eventually, the Israelites were taken captive to Babylon because of their crimes, where the psalmist wrote this poem (Ps. 137). How sad was their Babylonian captivity. The psalmist says that when the captors, the Babylonians, demanded him and the Israelites to sing them one of the songs of Zion, they hung their harps on the poplars in order not to obey their command (vv. 2-3). The reason is that the psalmist didn’t want to use holy songs for entertainment to the Gentiles (Park). How did it feel when the God's holy people were taken captive by the Gentiles, oppressed there, and were forced to sing God's holy songs for entertainment? Hence, the psalmist lamented in verse 4: “How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?” In this lament, the psalmist felt lonely in Babylonian captivity and thought about Zion on the banks of the Babylonian river and he wept. I think of his tears into two ways:
(1) The tears of the psalmist may have been tears of repentance prayer.
The psalmist's cry would have been the mourning of repentance. When he thought of the lost grace of God, he might have no choice but to think about the saints’ sins and thus repented in contrite heart (Park). When I think about “the lost grace of God”, I remember how I was before last Wednesday night prayer meeting. When I am full of grace, I can feel my heart full of thanks, peace, and joy. But when I forget God's grace, I am filled with heaviness, anxiety, and worry. In the midst of that, God revealed my sin and challenged me to live a life that was cut off from sin by confessing my sin. The next day Thursday, after the early morning prayer meeting, tears were in my eyes when I prayed with a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken bread left over from the yesterday Wednesday night prayer meeting. The reason is that I remembered the words of my sermon that I preached at the prayer meeting. I was grateful for God's providence for providing daily food. When we think of ourselves, of our families, especially our church, we must shed tears of repentance. What is the reason? This is because the church has forgotten the grace of God. When the church of the Lord has forgotten the grace of God, the church has no choice but to sin against God. Therefore, our church must repent to God. Then, in repentance, true restoration, reconciliation, reform, and revival can occur in the church.
(2) The tears that the psalmist shed were probably the tears of prayer in remembering God's saving grace.
Since we know that there is only one Savior God in the heart of those who truly repent, we cannot but plead with God to save us. As the psalmist was taken captive and lived with the Israelites in captivity in Babylon, he realized and repented of their sins and asked God for mercy and grace and deliverance from the Babylonian captivity and to lead them and guide them to their home land of Judah. As Jonah looked back to the Lord in the belly of a large fish and confessed, “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jon. 2:9), the psalmist longed for the grace of God's salvation, knowing that only God could save the Israelites. When we think of the church, the Lord's body, we must truly repent and ask God for His saving grace. We must pray for deliverance from all our dirty and ugly sins. We need to ask God to be born again as the holy and clean bride of Jesus, the Bridegroom. In the meantime, we should be a church preparing for the Lord's return. I hope and pray that we can shed tears of repentance and tears of prayer for God's grace of salvation when we think of the church.
Second, we must make it the highest joy when we think of the church.
Look at Psalms 137:6 – “May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.” The psalmist confessed that although he lived captive in the nation of Babylon, he considered Jerusalem his highest joy. In other words, he made Jerusalem his greatest joy. This shows the psalmist's God-centered godly life. Although he lived in captivity in the foreign nation Babylon, the psalmist cried, remembering Zion, and longing for God. It seems as though the psalmist missed Jerusalem as a captive in Babylon, just as a child who left home missed his parents and his home more than before. He longed for Jerusalem to be rebuilt and flourished as before, because the city of God, Jerusalem, was destroyed by Babylon (Calvin).
This should be our earnest prayer. In other words, we must pray for the Lord to rebuild the ruined church and to prosper like the early church. I think the early church was in its heyday in the history of the church. In the days when the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and boldly proclaimed the gospel, the power of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit appeared. The Lord added to the early church’s number daily those who were being saved and His loving community was built. That should be our church. We must pray for this true prosperity of our church. And as we look to the church of our time, as the psalmist shed tears of repentance and tears of prayer for the grace of God's salvation, we should ask the Lord to raise our church and to reform it. Why should we pray like this when we think of the church? The reason is because our church is our highest joy. Because the Lord who is the head of the church is our highest joy, the church of His body is also our highest joy. As the Westminster Short Catechism Question 1 says “What is the chief end of man?” and its answer says “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” we should enjoy the Lord forever. And he who rejoices in the Lord forever rejoices in His church as well. Then how can we enjoy the church as our highest joy? Like the psalmist, we must first remember and weep for the Lord's church. We must see the desolation of the church with our spiritual eyes because of our sins and weep tears of repentance. Without these tears of true repentance, we cannot taste the true joy of the Lord's work of rebuilding our church. So if we want to make the Lord's church our highest joy, we must shed tears of repentance. In the meantime, we must ask the Lord to save His church. Our earnest prayer should be for the Lord to rebuild His church. And when the Lord rebuilds His church, we must come to our highest joy, our Lord God and praise and worship Him with the songs of Zion. This is the life of those who rejoice, considering the Lord's church as their highest joy.
Third and last, we must pray to God when we think of the church.
Look at Psalms 137:7-9: ” Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. ‘Tear it down,’ they cried, ‘tear it down to its foundations!’ O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us - he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.“ The psalmist prayed to God for God's punishment for Babylon, the Israel's adversary and enemy. He asked God, “Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell” (v. 7). Of course, the Edomites weren’t the Babylonians. Rather, the Edomites rejoiced when the Babylonians struck Jerusalem (Job 10-16). Although they were originally brothers with the Israelites, they were Israeli enemies and were the object of God's wrath (Park). Then the Edomites and the Babylonians had something in common: they were the object of God's wrath (Ps. 137:7-9). The reason was because they oppressed the God's people, the Israelites. The psalmist, who remembered Zion at the rivers of Babylon, prayed to God to tear it down the Edomites, who were compared to the Babylonians who desolated Jerusalem.
As we pray to God, we must pray for God's wrath to come to Satan, the enemy of the Church, and his wicked servants. Of course, we may not be used to this kind of prayer. But while we pray for our salvation as God's people, it is a bit unbalanced not to pray for the judgment of the wicked. This is because in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, God's salvation and God's judgment usually go tougher. In other words, God saves His people (the Church) by judging His people’s enemies. Therefore, we must pray for the salvation of the church and the destruction of its enemies. We must pray for God's righteous judgment. We must pray that God will punish the enemies of His Church.
I think of two things when I think of the church as the body of the Lord. The words of the Lord's promise, Matthew 16:18 that the Lord will build His church and the hymn “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord”. This was because in 2003, when I attended the church renewal annual retreat, the Lord gave me that promised of Matthew 16:18 and the indwelling Holy Spirit made me to shed tears of longing for His church, Victory Presbyterian Church. I still remember that I shed tears in thinking of our church in longing and in love. I pray that the Lord to build His church so that we can grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can confesses who Jesus is and lives according to that confession. I also pray that the Lord will build our church on the solid rock. I sincerely pray that our church will be built as a true church that will fight against ourselves, the world, sin, and Satan and death and be victorious.