A Song for Weary Pilgrims

Dannah Gresh: Revive Our Hearts is brought to you in part by members of the Revive Partner team. 

Nikki: Hi this is Nikki from California. Revive Our Hearts has been the most tremendous blessing. I was introduced to Revive Our Hearts from our our dear pastor's wife who passed away last year from pancreatic cancer very young. She just instilled so many amazing godly things. One of the best things that she ever did was take a group of us to Indianapolis for a Revive Our Hearts Conference.

From that moment, 2014 I believe, I left being a Ministry Partner and have reaped the rewards through the blessing of all of the messages and testimonies and godly wisdom that just come at just the right time. I praise God for it. Lord willing I will be supporting and donating from here on out. Last year was able to increase just a little bit.

So I encourage anyone anyone to support this ministry. It has done invaluable things for my Christian walk. I have also let so many other people know so. I love Revive Our Hearts, and I'm so grateful to Nancy. Thank you.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to ask you . . .

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: What is your highest joy? What do you live for? What do you love? // The point here is that our hearts must never become more attached to our temporal home than it is attached to our eternal heavenly home.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules, for June 5, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

The value system all around us is often opposed to God’s values. Do you ever long to be rid of the wickedness we see everywhere? If so, you’re not alone. Today, Nancy’s taking us to Psalm 137 to provide some helpful perspective. 

If you’re feeling a little bit like a weary, wandering pilgrim today, it’s the Psalm for you. This episode is actually a preview of the Wonder of the Word series coming in 2027 and 2028. We’re getting so excited to walk through the whole Bible with Nancy! In the meantime, let’s continue to enjoy our summer in the Psalms.

Nancy: As we've been going through this journey in the Psalms, I've tried to pick a number of psalms that were familiar and beloved ones. We've been through Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” We've looked at Psalm 121: “I will lift my eyes to the hills; where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, who is the maker of heaven and earth.” These are ones that are familiar to many of us who've read through the Scripture over the years. 

But then there are those occasional psalms that you rarely will hear a message on. They're not ones that you would just pick up your Bible and say, “Oh, I want to read that psalm, or I want to get comfort from that psalm, or I'm familiar with that psalm.” That's one of the ones we're going to look at today. It's Psalm 137. Unlike some of the other psalms we've looked at, this psalm is a lament. It's filled with pathos. It's filled with pain. It's filled with anxiety.

A little bit of the background. You remember we've studied in the Old Testament history books, that in 587 BC, Jerusalem, the capital of the southern nation of Judah, was destroyed by the Babylonians. The temple was destroyed; the city walls and gates were destroyed, and the Jews were sent into exile in Babylon as a result of their idolatry, their disobedience. This was God's discipline. He used the Babylonians to discipline His people. 

Now, this psalm was likely written during the exile, or perhaps shortly after the exile, as the people were returning back to Judah, but the pain was still very fresh to God's people of what they had been through and what had been done to them. 

It's a short psalm. It's got three stanzas, and we want to look at it today and ask ourselves, “What did it mean to the person who wrote this psalm and the people who would have sung it at the time,” but also, “What does it mean to us, living in a New Testament era of God's grace, and yet knowing that there is wickedness in this world, and God judges wickedness.” 

So we'll take it just a stanza at a time. The first four verses we might say are seeing God's people grieving in exile, and while they're there they've been longing for home, longing for Jerusalem, longing for their homeland. So verse 1, Psalm 137: 

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. 

Now in the Scripture, Babylon is often used as a type, a symbol of an anti-God world system. It's powerful, it's wealthy, it's prosperous, but it's also corrupt and idolatrous. It's characterized by pride, greed, sexual immorality. You'll see this in Old Testament references to Babylon. You'll also see it in New Testament references. Babylon, whether it's literally Babylon of the ancient world or the type that it reflects today, is a culture. It's a world system that torments God's people. And in the Scripture, Babylon is often contrasted with Zion or Jerusalem (those two are often used interchangeably—Zion and Jerusalem) which is synonymous for the holy city of God. 

So we have Babylon, the city of man, the city of this world, the place of wickedness, that hates God and His people. And we have Zion or Jerusalem, the Holy City of God, where God's people love to go and worship.

So now the people of God are in Babylon, or they've just been released from Babylon. It says “we sat down and wept.” We wept. This is deep grief, wailing, lamentation for what has been their experience of captivity, of loss, of destruction, all the things they've experienced. 

• They wept over their sin that had resulted in them being exiled to Babylon in the first place. 
• They wept perhaps over the memory of what they had lost, of what they had forfeited because of their forsaking the Lord their God. 
• They wept over what had happened to their homeland, to the temple, the place that God had set apart on earth, where His presence would dwell and where they had worshiped God. 

We sat down in Babylon and we wept. We wept when we remembered Zion. So they wept, and they remembered Zion. That word “remember” or “remembered” is three times in this short psalm. They're remembering, and in this case, they're remembering Zion. 

Now, ancient Babylon was an advanced civilization. It was beautiful, it was wealthy, it was prosperous, but it wasn't home to God's people. God's people were captives. They were persecuted by those who despised God and Jerusalem and God's people. Babylon was a foreign land, as we'll see in just a moment in verse 4. It was corrupt. It was godless, and God's people in exile, in Babylon, longed for home. They longed for freedom. They longed to worship Yahweh in His temple, even though at one time they had taken all of that for granted, and that's why they were in this situation in the first place. 

Now, if you're a child of God, you have a sense of not belonging in this world; this earthly Babylon is not our home. First Peter 2:11 tells us that we are aliens. We are exiles. We don't fit here. We don't belong here. This isn't our homeland. And often in this world, in this earthly Babylon, we're scorned by those who despise the City of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the kingdom of God, the people of God. They want nothing to do with that, so they make our lives here on earth difficult. 

All of this being not being at home, being in a place that is foreign, that doesn't have our worldview, that doesn't care about the things we care about, this can be painful. And I'm reminded as we study this psalm that it's okay to grieve, it's okay to weep, it's okay to feel sad. There's something wrong if we don't feel a sadness about the fact that we are living in Babylon as the people of God. We can't expect Babylon, this world, this earth, to be like home.

We shouldn't be surprised when the people and the customs and the laws and the worldview and the thinking of Babylon are different than the thinking of Zion. Those are two very different systems, two different worldviews. We shouldn't be surprised when Babylon rejects those who claim another citizenship, when we say we don't belong here. We're people of God. We're not people of this world, and we shouldn't be surprised when the people of Babylon have a problem with that.

But as we weep, as we grieve, as we lament, we need to remember Zion. When you're living in Babylon, don't forget your true home. Don't forget where you belong. Don't forget the country that you're a true citizen of. Don't get too comfortable. Don't get too settled down here in Babylon. Don't try to fit in. 

As remarkable as this culture can be in some ways, we don't belong here. You have a different passport. You have a different identity. That's why we need to remember Zion, even as we find ourselves weeping in Babylon. Verse 2: 

There [in Babylon] we hung up our lyres [or our harps] on the poplar trees.
For our captors there asked us for songs,
and our tormentors, for rejoicing: 
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” [they said] (vv. 2–3) 

So to add insult to injury, God's people were taunted by their Babylonian captors. The Babylonians wanted the exiles to entertain them, “Sing for us one of the songs of Zion.” But between the memory of Zion and what they had lost and their current situation in Babylon, the result of God's discipline, God's people just didn't feel like singing anymore. So they say in verse 4. 

How can we sing the LORD's song on foreign soil? 

They were away from the temple. They were away from the place where they worshiped the Lord, the beloved Jerusalem, Zion. It's hard to sing God's song, the song of the Lord, when you're living in a place that hates Him, it's hostile toward Him. So when we're sad, when we're in pain, when we're discouraged about the hardness of life in this broken, fallen world, we want to hang up our harps, put down our instruments. We don't feel like singing; we don't think we can sing. How can we sing the Lord's song on foreign soil? But I want us to remember that even when we're in a foreign land away from our true home, God can give us a song to sing. 

When we have the courage and the faith to sing God's song, even in a foreign land, our faith is going to be strengthened. This is what happens when we gather for corporate worship in our churches with the people of God. We can face opposition. We can be assaulted by the world all week long. 

But then we come together and we sing the great hymns of our faith, the gospel songs, what happens? Our faith is bolstered. We get courage to go out and face the world again on Monday morning. When we sing the Lord's song, not only are we encouraged as we sing the song of the redeemed, but when we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land, we also make the gospel believable to the citizens of that foreign land.

They hear us. They see us. They see us proclaiming that God is good and God is faithful. Singing the Lord's song in a foreign land is a gospel witness to those who are citizens of this foreign land. There are many examples in Scripture and in history and around us of those who have sung the Lord's song in a foreign land. 

Think of the book of Acts, chapter 16, with Paul and Silas in prison singing hymns to God at midnight. They were, so to speak, in Babylon. They were in a place they didn't belong. They were in a place that wasn't home. They were being persecuted for their faith. But what were they doing in their pain, in their being rejected? They were singing hymns of praise to the Lord. 

I think of David. We've studied him in our journey through the Old Testament, hiding in a cave, fleeing from King Saul. And you think of how many psalms would be missing from our Bibles if David had not purposed to sing the Lord's song in a foreign land. That's why we have some of these songs of lament that David and others wrote for us. 

I think of a story I read some time ago about Chinese believers singing while the government forcibly removed a cross from the top of their church. They purposed to sing the Lord's song in a foreign land while they were being taunted and persecuted for their faith. 

I think of our friend Joni Tada who all her life has been known for perpetually singing through her pain, this quadriplegic who has been in constant pain for years and years, decades, and singing the Lord's song, singing hymns, singing praise. If you ever have known Joni, you know this about her perpetually singing the Lord's song in a place of difficulty and pain. 

And no better example is there than Jesus, who sang the Lord's song in a foreign land, this earth—this whole earth was a foreign land to Him, even though He created it. He came from heaven to this earth. You remember how that Last Supper, the last night before he was arrested and sentenced to death and hung on that cross. Before they left, He and His disciples left that room where they'd had the Last Supper together as they were heading out to the Garden of Gethsemane with so much heaviness. 

Jesus, knowing He would be betrayed and knowing He would be denied, He heads out to that Garden of Gethsemane. The Scripture tells us that Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn in that dark, foreign land, that dark, difficult place. Probably, as we've said in earlier past studies in Psalms, they probably sang that Jewish Hallel, Psalms 115–118, they take on such new meaning when you say, “These are the songs Jesus may have sung, likely did sing, on the way to the cross, singing the Lord's song in a foreign land.” 

Now it may seem difficult, it may seem impossible to sing the Lord's song in the foreign land, so to speak, where you are living. But I want to encourage you and encourage myself to purpose to sing the Lord's song, even through your tears. To sing the Lord's song, the ways of God, the Word of God, the truth about God by faith in joyful anticipation of that day when we will be back home with the Lord in the heavenly Jerusalem, when there will be a new heavens, a new earth, and we will have no more crying, no more tears. Sing the Lord's song now as a statement of faith of what will be the case in that day. 

So the question is, verse 4, “How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?” The answer is: remember Zion. As you remember Zion, that will make you weep, but it will also help you sing as you remember what God has for us in our eternal home. Weep and sing. 

So we see God's people in those first four verses, grieving in exile, longing for home. Now, as we come to verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 137, we see God's people refusing to forget Zion. They are loyal to the Lord, even in this foreign land where they don't belong, but realizing that God is the One who has sent them there, so they refuse to forget Zion. Look at verses 5 and 6. 

If I forget you, Jerusalem [or Zion], may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, 
if I do not remember you, 
if I do not exalt Jerusalem as my greatest joy.

Now again, we've mentioned that Babylon was a beautiful place. Many remarkable wonders of the ancient world were there. It was affluent. It was sophisticated. It would have been easy for the people of God to assimilate there, to settle in, to start to feel at home there and to forget the true God, to forget Yahweh, to forget the worship of God. 

But the singer of this psalm promises never to forget his true home. He says of his hand and his voice, “May I be rendered powerless and useless. May I not be able to sing anymore if I become more attached to Babylon, where I am at this moment, than I do to Jerusalem.” He promises to love what God loves; to prize what God prizes. 

As I've soaked in this psalm, I find myself asking myself and I want to ask you, “What is your highest joy?” Like, you're living life—you're going to school, you're going to work, you're raising kids, you're doing whatever it is you do all day long. But what is your highest joy? What do you live for? What do you long for? What do you love? 

Jerusalem was a symbol of the people of God, the City of God, the place of God's presence, in the New Testament sense of the Church of Jesus Christ. And the point here is that our hearts must never become more attached to our temporal, earthly home, where we are not citizens; than it is attached to our eternal, heavenly home. “I don't want to forget you. I want to remember You. I want to exalt Jerusalem as my greatest, my highest joy.” 

So then we come to verses 7–9. We've seen them grieving in exile, longing for home. We've seen them refusing to forget Zion, being loyal to the Lord. But then we come to the third and final stanza, verses 7–9, which is unquestionably the hardest part of this lament psalm. 

This is where we see God's people crying out for justice, pleading to be avenged of their enemies. God's people have remembered Zion, their homeland. They've promised never to forget. Now they ask God to remember. They ask God never to forget what has been done to them, and they identified two adversaries in this psalm: first the Edomites, and second the Babylonians. We read about the Edomites in verse 7.

Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites said that day at Jerusalem: 
“Destroy it! Destroy it down to its foundations!” 

Now, the Edomites were descendants of Esau related to Israel. In Numbers 20 (we read this passage some months ago) the Edomites treated the Israelites harshly. And then when the Babylonians destroyed the temple and the city of Jerusalem, Edom refused to side with Jerusalem, refused to come to her aid. And God promised to repay them for what they had done. You read in that little Old Testament prophet of Obadiah. 

As you have done [speaking of Edom, God says], it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head. (Obadiah 15)

And so the psalmist asked God to remember the damage that his enemies have done to his city and to his people and to repay them as He has said He would do. He appeals to God for justice to be meted out to their abusers. 

You have in these verses some of the most severe language you will ever read in the Scripture. There are few of them in the Scripture. They're sometimes called imprecatory psalms. Imprecation means “to call down evil or curses on someone.” And you see this in verses 8–9.

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, 
happy is the one who pays you back
what you have done to us. 
Happy is he who takes your little ones 
and dashes them against the rocks.

End of Psalm 137. Now, you probably haven't heard a whole lot of messages on those verses. One commentator said, “Psalm 137 has the distinction of having one of the most beloved opening lines [“By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept”] and the most horrifying closing line of any psalm.” 

This wording is disturbing, it's grotesque, it's shocking and gruesome. But we need to understand that this prayer is not out of a personal desire for revenge, but it's out of a desire for God's justice to be glorified and to be carried out on these cruel evil doers. This prayer is a response to God's expressed intention toward this evil empire for the way they have treated his people. 

For example, you read in Jeremiah chapter 51 God says, “I will repay Babylon . . . for all the evil that they have done in Zion” (v. 24). And the psalmist, the songwriter, is saying, “God, fulfill Your promises to not let these people get away with all they have done to be Your adversaries and to hate Your people.”

The judgment requested against Babylon seems merciless and brutal, but this is exactly what the Babylonians had done to the Jewish children when they sacked Jerusalem—banged their heads against rocks. Every sin that Babylon has committed against Zion will be repaid. They have destroyed others, and they will be destroyed. 

So why does he say, “Happy is the one who pays you back; happy is the one who dashes your little ones against the rocks”? Your translation may say, “Blessed are these people?” Well, the songwriter anticipates the day when the anti-God world system, represented or symbolized by ancient Babylon, comes under God's crushing judgment. God's people will one day rejoice in the vindication of God's righteousness, His holiness, His justice. 

So for example, we read in Revelation chapter 18, as we go to the end of the story. We read about an angel coming down from heaven, calling out with a loud voice, saying: 

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!” [Babylon who was great is no longer great. And then] “Rejoice over her, heaven, and you saints . . . because God has pronounced on her the judgment she passed on you!” (vv. 1–2, 20)

This is going to be one of the reasons for worship in the end. God has done what is right. God has dealt with all wrongdoing. God has righted all wrongs. God has judged and destroyed those who sought to destroy Him and His people. 

So awkward, awful psalms such as Psalm 137 (the psalm’s not awful, but the content of it makes us like, “Ooh, I don't want to read that like”), that's not a passage you want to read out loud in your Sunday morning service with children there. But psalms like this remind us how incredibly horrific sin is that it would bring about these kinds of awful consequences. 

These kinds of psalms also remind us that God, our God, Yahweh, is a righteous and just God. He never forgets when His people are sinned against, and He will repay all evildoers. He will recompense all arrogance, abuse, cruelty, and oppression. He will take care of it. It's not our job to do that, but God will vindicate His righteousness.

It also reminds us that our own sins will not go unpunished. How often have we been insensitive, harsh, cruel, unkind in our treatment of others? Maybe not like the Babylonians were, but if looks and words could kill, we're murderers, aren't we? We deserve God's wrath for our sin, as Babylon did for hers. We're reminded, as we put this psalm in the context of the gospel in the New Testament, that we will receive His wrath unless we repent, unless we place our faith in Christ who bore the wrath of God in our place, unless we receive His mercy and His forgiveness, we are doomed to judgment, along with Babylon. 

Then I see just this glimpse of Jesus here, where it talks about little ones being dashed against the rocks. Jesus, the precious, pure, perfect Son of God, became a little one who was crushed for the sins of the world, who paid the ultimate penalty for all the injustice in the history of the world, and was ultimately put to death not for his own sins, but for ours. 

So in light of what Jesus has done for us as New Testament believers, we are called and we are given grace, not to pray for vengeance on God's adversaries, on those who wronged us, but to pray for mercy for our enemies, to pray for them to be made right with God, to be to pray for them to be spared from the wrath of God. It's Jesus saying from the cross, “Father, forgive them.” That's what we pray in a New Testament sense. It's Stephen praying in Acts 7, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them, against them,” even as they are stoning him to death (v. 60). 

Today, it often seems that the godless powers of this world are prevailing. Those may be nations, governments, neighbors, other people, family members, who are determined to undermine God's rule and reign in this world. But we're reminded here that the enemies of God and His people will not have the final word. This is not the end of the story. We've got to keep our eyes on the end. 

As we're living here in Babylon, so to speak, there is no power, no nation, no institution, no ruler, no person who is so great, so powerful that God cannot bring them down in a moment, if and when He chooses. And this is exactly what He will do for all unrepentant non-believers in this world.

Now, those of us who love and follow Christ, we are citizens of Zion, the City of God. That's our ultimate home. But for now, we're living in Babylon, the city of man, and we have to deal with the enemies of God. We have to deal with wickedness. We have to deal with a Babylon that often appears to be thriving, flourishing, victorious. But we need to remember that her prosperity is short-lived. It will not last forever. 

 

Revelation talks about Babylon being destroyed in a single day, yes, in a single hour. When God says it's over, it's over. Her riches, her power, her cruelty, will all be gone, and there will be no more enemies for us to deal with all the rest of eternity. So don't let Babylon have your heart. 

You see this concept all through Scripture. Zechariah 2 says, “Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon.” Flee to the God of Zion. Flee to Christ, the Savior, who is taking us home to our heavenly Zion in eternal Jerusalem. 

Psalm 137, if you just take it by itself, it's not a good ending. It's not the end of the story. It ends unresolved. But here's the end of the story, Revelation chapter 21. 

I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. . . . He will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (vv. 2–4).

So for now, we sit by the waters of Babylon, weeping, grieving the pain, the devastation caused by our sin and by the sins of others, longing to be home in Zion, home with the Lord. 

While we're down here, we may be misunderstood, we will be heartbroken, homesick, we're living as exiles. But we don't have to live without a song. Sing the Lord's song, with tears if you must, but don't stop singing. Don't stop singing and longing and trusting, because Zion is real. Babylon is not eternal. Our heavenly Jerusalem that will come down to earth, the presence of God living with man, that's what's real. That's what's eternal. 

Jesus bore the curse of exile to bring us home to God. One day heaven will come to earth. The people of God will no longer be in a foreign land. We will live forever in Zion with our God, home where we belong, in the country we love and have longed for, and to which we belong. We will join the redeemed in that place, in singing the Lord's song forever. Amen. 

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth inviting you to remember your eternal hope. I love this last exhortation she just gave us. “Don't stop singing and longing and trusting, because Zion is real.” Heaven is real. This is the best news for those of us who feel weary of the world’s brokenness. It’s only temporary. This is not your home. 

What should we do in the meantime? Remember the goodness to come! One way we do that is by reading God’s Word and meditating on it. I’m so passionate about helping our teen girls do that. Over on the Wonder App, we’re in the middle of our Summer Bible Reading Challenge. This challenge is designed to help your girls meditate on eternal things all summer long. We want to guard them from scrolling their summers away—and help them turn screen time into Scripture time. 

Would you let a teen girl in your life know about this challenge? It’s not too late to hop in! When she joins, she’ll get to study Psalms with our Wonder mentors—young women who are just as passionate about getting your girls in God’s Word as I am. Learn more and download the app at ReviveOurHearts.com/wonder. And don’t forget to share it with a teen you love!

Now, to help you keep your eyes fixed on eternity, we’d love to send you Nancy’s newly updated classic, Dwell: Thirty Days with God in the Psalms. This devotional resource is meant to supplement your time in God’s Word this summer. In thirty days, you’ll unpack the beauty inside thirty psalms with Nancy. We’ll send it to you when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts. To give and request yours, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Next week, get excited for some more time in the Psalms together. We’re going to be spending the next two weeks in one Psalm, actually—Psalm 46. God is a Mighty Fortress. We’re gonna peel back lots of layers on that truth together. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan. Calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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