- This verse is one of the key reasons

why you would not like the Bible

and why you would believe

the people who believe the Bible are idiots.

The Bible is freeing you up

to be honest with how life is hard.

- Where are we in the Bible?

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

The Bible begins in the Old Testament,

written around 3500 years ago.

The first five books of the Old Testament:

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,

are known as the Pentateuch, or books of the law.

The next 12 books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth,

1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings,

1 Chronicle, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

Whew, That's a lot.

These are known as the historical books.

This brings us to the books of the Bible

known as the Wisdom Literature.

It starts with Job and then into

a collection of 150 lyrical poems known as The Psalms.

- Life is hard and God is able.

Hey, I'm Brian. Great to be with you today.

It is hard.

I hope that's not the clue phone ringing for you.

You've probably figured out by now

it is hard and God is able.

One of the ways that we can cope with the difficulty

is by connecting with God,

which I'm going to try to help you do that today.

And we're going to start a new series

in the Book of Psalms.

Psalms, some people mispronounce as songs,

which is an understandable thing

because Psalms actually are songs.

I'm in a place right now

where people perform music and songs.

There's something about lifting up our hearts

and saying things that makes a way for us

spiritually and also actually emotionally.

Psalms has all different kinds of Psalms.

There are Psalms that are meant to be Thanksgiving.

In the 150 Psalms. there's a lot of them.

It's a big, big book.

So if you ever read like an old school Bible study

where someone says, "Open up your Bibles,

your paper Bibles to the book of Psalms."

A little hint open up to the middle of the Bible.

It'll just fall open.

And in the midst of that large, large book in the Bible,

150 chapters, some of those are known as Psalms

or songs because they would be used in worship

of Thanksgiving where we're giving God thanks.

Some of them are are known as Psalms of Lament,

where we're just saying, "God, this is rough,

man, this is tough."

I'm just lamenting the state that my life is in,

where I am financially or where I am emotionally

or where I am spiritually or whatever it is.

I'm just lamenting.

I'm just sitting in the crap of where I am.

There are Psalms that do that.

And then there's Psalms,

the one we're going to look at today

is known as an Imprecatory Psalm.

It's a Psalm where you're just needing to vent,

your need to say whatever you need to say to get to God.

And you just need to let it all out.

And there's anger and there's bitterness,

and there's, ugh.

When I feel that way, there are certain Psalms

I just go to and I just [grunts]

or when it comes on the radio,

I immediately go to it [grunts]

and I just [grunts].

I'm kind of like that, you know.

I think of a girlfriend

who might have dumped me in junior high,

like, [grunts] "Jane Pessoal," you know?

[grunts] just, [grunts], it's just like that.

Here's one song that I do.

And if you notice, as I do this in a music venue

where people actually know how to sing,

I'm not one of those folks. I'm not.

I do this for my own benefit.

And we need to learn to connect with God

through music and through the Psalms or through prayers,

which I'm going to help you do today

for your own benefit.

Not just for the benefit of God,

because He wants to hear from you,

but also for your own benefit.

Here is one such song.

[music: Go your own way, Fleetwood Mac]

I don't know if you enjoyed that or not.

Probably not, but I did.

I got something out of me.

This is part of what the Psalms are about.

Most of them are written by King David,

but there are actually more than seven authors

that are named inside of the Psalms.

The one we're going to look at today, Psalm 137,

it's certainly not written by King David

because it came around long, long after he died.

It was when the nation of Israel was in bondage

and captivity and had been thrown out of

or exiled out of their land,

out of what's known as the holy city of Zion.

Here's what it says in the Book of Psalms 137.

They're devastated, emotionally devastated.

They're remembering their old, ancient city,

and they're weeping.

Verse two:

They took their lyre, or their rough guitar,

and they hung it up and said, "We're done with music.

No more happy songs for us. We're done with it."

In fact, their tormenters, you can kind of imagine them

as maybe drunken, drunken sailors or drunken soldiers,

like, "Hey, hey, sing us one of those songs of Zion."

Like, "Oh, my goodness, this is so bad.

Not only can I not sing out of joy,

I've got to actually sing to make

a bunch of drunk people or a bunch of tormentors

actually happy?"

Then verse four:

They say, "How in the world am I supposed to sing

in a situation like this? God, I can't do it.

I can't do it. I can't sing like this.

In fact, if I've got to sing, have me forget

how to strum the lyre, how to strum the guitar."

Then they continue with this emotional venting to God.

Verse six:

They say, "God, I'm feeling emotional right now.

I'm feeling life is hard.

But I want -- I want to have You as my highest joy."

Then verse seven:

They say, "Remember God, how they were taunting,

remember how they wanted everything to go down.

Just remember, I'm remembering it and I'm feeling it.

I'm feeling it right now. I'm emoting right now."

This is Imprecatory Psalm.

"I'm feeling it right now. I'm saying how I feel, God."

And then verse eight:

Yeah, this is no like love your enemy as yourself.

They're feeling it and saying, "Oh, my gosh,

I hope you get yours. May yours come your way."

And then, it almost sounds like the New Testament

for just a split second.

It sounds like Jesus actually in the Sermon on the Mount

when they say in verse nine:

Oh, my goodness.

Jesus said blessed is the peacemaker,

blessed is he who is poor in spirit.

And here we have the psalmist saying,

"Blessed is he who takes your little ones

and dashes them against the rock." Wow.

This verse is one of the key reasons

why you would not like the Bible

and why you would believe that

people who believe the Bible are idiots.

How in the world can you have a holy book

where your high literature is telling God

take their infants and dash them against rocks?

I mean, we unfortunately in our culture,

in too, too recent times, like weeks, days,

have had little ones killed who were innocent.

Aren't little ones innocent, especially babies?

And yet we have the Bible calling seemingly

for the destruction of this. Why is this?

I want to get into that in a moment,

but I just want to make sure that we understand

that the Bible is freeing you up

to be honest with how life is hard.

This is Father's Day. I'm a father,

so I've got a lot of connection with Father's Day.

It's also Juneteenth.

It's another holiday, a great holiday

that's actually in our country

that I don't have as much emotional buy in with

because I'm white, but I am emotionally

getting more and more attached to it

as I understand the plight of African Americans

and former slaves way back when.

Juneteenth is about all of the slaves, former slaves,

finally understanding that they are free.

And I find it ironic, I picked this Psalm months ago

not knowing that this is going to fall

right here on Juneteenth,

because African Americans, former slaves,

have had an Imprecatory Psalm on their lips

for a long, long, long time.

This psalm wasn't just used by former slaves.

It was also used by the original people

who came to America from Europe, the Pilgrims.

The Pilgrims would quote the Psalm

and say this Psalm again because they felt like

they had come from a foreign land,

just like the nation of Israel felt like

they came from another land to a foreign land.

Here, the Pilgrims, the original pilgrims

felt like they weren't welcomed with

their religious beliefs back where they were in Europe,

and they came to a land where

they weren't understood and accepted,

and that's how they felt.

And they would quote this Psalm all the time.

And then this Psalm was quoted by Frederick Douglass

and others who would see this as the plight

of the former slaves, of Africans.

It was a song that's been put into disco.

They actually wanted me to sing that song.

I would not sing that song.

This Psalm's been put in all different types

of music styles because it endures.

In the Black Music Research Journal,

it's called Babylon Revisited,

Psalm 137 as an American protest Psalm.

And here's a portion of what the article says:

This is why many African Americans

have identified with Psalm 137.

It's why the original pilgrims, the original Puritans

identified as Psalm 137.

And it's also why you today may identify with it.

It wasn't written by David,

because King David didn't experience

this oppression with Babylon,

but he would have written something like this

because he felt like he was persecuted.

He felt like things were going awfully.

And you may feel that as well.

In fact, whole groups,

your whole family might feel that way.

Your whole community might feel that way.

Actually, our whole country might feel that way.

This is a group lament or a group Imprecatory Psalm

where we just say, "God, I am not happy.

We are not happy."

Now, the irony here is verse nine when it says,

"Blessed is he,"

we think there's going to be something nice

that Jesus would say, but instead,

"Blessed is he who dashes infants against the rocks."

This isn't a blessing like the Sermon on the Mount is.

It's a curse. It's not a blessing.

Here we have the psalmist

actually uttering a form of curse.

Now, this is an example of something in the Bible

that isn't true. [gasps / background music stops]

This is okay.

This is somethin in the Bible that isn't true.

It is not true that God wants people

to pray for the destruction of innocent life.

It's not true that God likes having babies killed.

The Bible is not endorsing infanticide here. It's not.

What it is endorsing, it's endorsing

being in touch with your emotions

and taking them before God.

It is endorsing becoming emotionally

and spiritually healthy by not holding things in.

That's what we're going to spend

the rest of our time talking about.

- Hey, everyone, I'm Kyle. - And I'm Hannah.

- We just wanted to say if you're enjoying this episode

and you want to support us,

your giving could go a long way in allowing us

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And you can give super easily right here in our app.

It's as simple as going to your profile page,

clicking the gear in the corner and then clicking give.

- So easy.

- Now let's get back to the message.

- I've got to tell you a story I had just this last week.

I went to the gym where I work out,

and in the one section there is

a bunch of weight benches for people to do flies on

or presses or incline curls or some such things.

About, I don't know, maybe ten of them.

All of them are used by somebody except for one,

and that one has a water bottle

with some keys sitting on it.

It's like someone saving the equipment,

which is really a breach of gym protocol.

You can't save equipment with inanimate objects, right?

So I walk over, I'm looking for whose it might be

just to tell them, like, hey, I'm going to,

you know, just to let them know I'm going to work in.

I'm looking around,

I don't see anybody looking at me.

So I go, okay, well, let's just move it.

So I take it off and I move it about a foot to the side,

put on the floor nice and carefully,

keep everything together.

Get down. I start doing my reps.

I start doing my reps,

just about done with my last one,

guy comes up, big guy says,

"Hey, can I have my bench back?"

And I'm just about done.

And at that point, the one beside me had opened up.

So I could have said, "Well, just use that one."

But I was like, "Yeah, fine."

So I just went over to the other one

and as I was going over the other one,

I said, "Hey, hey, man.

It's just it's against gym protocol.

You can't be saving your equipment."

And he goes, "My stuff. I can't --

I can't save my equipment

when I'm when I'm going to the bathroom?"

I and don't remember exactly what I said,

but I basically said, "No, no, you can't."

And he didn't like hearing that at all.

And things were getting a bit heated.

So I was like, whatever, you know,

the Bible says, blessed are the peacemakers.

So I just try to make some peace and just remove myself.

So I go over to the other gym bench

and and I'm doing my exercise.

I look over, he's doing similar exercises,

except he's using a lot more weight than I am.

He's got more muscle mass than I have.

I probably fueled his adrenaline surge

to just rep them out.

And I think he's enjoying

me not being able to lift as much as he has.

So I'm on about rep eight or so

and I sense the spirit of God say to me,

"Brian, go be a peacemaker, just be a peacemaker."

So stop my weights, put them down, cut my set short.

I go over, I stick out my hand.

I said, "Hey, my name is Brian."

He looks at me and he kind of weakly puts his hand out

and shakes my hand.

And I say, "Hey, man, I really didn't."

I start explaining why I did what I did

and where it was.

I was trying to be nice

and maybe I didn't say it right or whatever did happen,

but he wasn't having any of it.

He said, "You can't be moving my stuff,

my personal, private property. You can't be."

And I could tell he was still amped up.

And so I was like, okay, okay.

I just just dropped it and went back and doing my thing.

Now, let me tell you the main conclusion I had

coming out of that story.

People don't know how to use public gym equipment.

That's the main conclusion I have,

though that's true, that's not the main conclusion.

You know what I had?

That guy had a whole bunch of problems in his life

before someone moved his water bottle and keys.

That guy has had a hard day. He's had a hard week.

Maybe he's had a hard life.

I don't know what's going on,

but you generally don't get that hyped up over that

unless something is going wrong.

Hey, life is hard.

Three big ideas as we come down the final stretch.

Life is hard.

The nation of Israel is feeling this.

They've been thrown out of their land.

They've been robbed of their culture.

They're having their situation rubbed in their face.

"So sing a songs, Jewish people sing a songs

that make us party hard."

It's not good at all.

And I don't know where it is that we started

to think that if I know God, if I know Jesus,

then life isn't going to be hard.

It's just not true.

There's no verse in the Bible that ever tells you that.

You can have peace,

you can have joy that transcends all circumstances.

But Jesus said, quote, I quote him exactly:

In this life you will have trouble.

I think we struggle with our faith because

we're under the illusion that if I'm with God,

if I'm in the family business,

there should be some perks that are coming my way.

And when life is hard, then we start doubting our faith

and getting a bad attitude.

But if we just accept on the front end

that life is hard, it's going to be hard,

It'll help us format and frame things.

The Psalms remind us that of that again and again.

Psalm 137 is an Imprecatory Psalms.

You see, the psalmist is looking around

at a terrain that would look like this,

this is in the Middle East,

you have big rocks all over the place.

And ironically, in the motorcycle world,

those who ride off road,

rocks that are about this size are referred to

as baby heads.

I know it's gross. I know it's awful.

Everyone hates that when they hear it first,

but it's about the size of a baby's head.

And when you drive over it,

it's awful because your tires move around

and all that stuff.

I don't know if whoever came up with that term

understands Psalm 137, but this is what's taking place.

This, these, this community that's in emotional turmoil

and physical pain, who's being humiliated.

They're just crying out to God and they're saying,

"God, I wish -- I wish you would just

take their infants, dash them on the rocks,

just take them and just, bam, dash them on the rocks."

I was going to maybe get a baby doll to show this,

but it would have been so traumatic

just to see that with a baby doll,

it would be awful sights.

It's actually even awful to even hear it talked about.

That's why it's easier sometimes in the Bible

just to criticize it and shut it off

than it is to say what is the Bible actually saying

and wrestle with it.

Let's not run away from this. Let's wrestle with it.

You ever had injustice done to you,

any form of injustice?

You ever been let go from a job when somebody else

was the one who should have been let go

because you were a higher performer,

maybe they were taking the accolades

that should be coming your way?

You ever been cheated on in a marriage?

You ever been divorced?

You have been lied about?

You have been shamed on social media?

Have you ever been abused as a child?

You ever been abused as an adult

by somebody who was physically more strong than you?

Have you ever had somebody lie to you

and cause you to be bankrupt because you trusted them

and now your life is in tatters financially?

Have you ever -- I could go on and on and on.

These are all forms of injustice.

And when you have this happen to you,

it's appropriate to be angry.

One thing that happened to a staff person

just this past week, I just found out about,

it's just awful.

An African American person on our staff

and they just were processing said,

"Three times in the last week I was profiled.

Three times I was profiled."

What does that mean?

Well, the last time, what it means is

a young white child with his mother

looks at a black man and says, "Oh, no, we have to run."

Horrible.

Now, how would that make you feel?

I don't know how it would make me feel.

I've never had that happen to me.

But I'll tell you what,

that happens three times in a week,

that's one week, something's going to rise up in you.

All of us on one level or another have felt

some sort of bad hand that's been dealt us.

And when you feel that, how do you respond?

Do you take it to God?

This guy I talked about in the gym,

I'm confident he was not taking it to God.

I'm confident he wasn't aware of God.

I have great pity for him because

life has been difficult for him

and he doesn't know how to handle it and vents it.

In Psalm 137, we see the psalmist,

the people of God venting to God,

and God doesn't hear these things and say,

"Oh, do you want that done with the infants?

Oh, okay, I'll consider that."

No, God isn't listening to that and saying,

"Okay, you're praying that I actually

dash infants against rocks. Oh, I consider it."

No, God isn't into that.

God's never going to do that.

But God is able, that's the second big idea. He's able.

God is able to -- He's able to get you to a new place.

God is able to give you grace.

God is able to give you strength

that surpasses understanding.

God is able to give you peace to pass understanding.

And God is able to hear you vent.

He's able to take your emotions.

To many of us we think prayer is about

just telling God the things that He wants to hear.

That's not good communication.

He wants to hear from us.

He needs to hear from us,

not to educate Him necessarily,

but He needs to hear from us so He knows

that the relationship is healthy and strong.

When a relationship is there,

there is accurate emoting and venting.

And this is what the nation of Israel is doing.

I've done this a bunch the last two years.

Man, I've had some really tough times.

I'm doing pretty well right now.

Man, rough, rough times.

People shaming me on social media.

People using their understanding of me as a person

who we've been friends in the past

and cracking on me and trying to

character assassinate me for things that aren't true.

Frustrated about just what it looks like

to be leading a church or leading an organization,

any organization in this time,

anybody who's in management or leadership

can tell you it's just not fun to lead people right now.

Everybody is sensitive, everybody is on edge,

everybody is hurting.

Nobody has enough bandwidth to offer grace.

Every decision seems loaded.

It is frustrating being a part of a thing that

we've grown a lot this last year.

But before that, man, just everyone's leaving,

everyone's upset, everything's --

dealing with family tensions.

And I just sit before God sometimes in my prayer time,

I sat before God months ago and God would hear me say,

[grunts] I'm not going to tell you the word right now.

It starts with an F.

And I would just tell God, [grunts] "God, why?"

I'm not going to repeat all the prayers,

but I'll tell you right now,

God can handle my profanity when I'm talking to Him.

He can. He's heard it before.

I'm not cursing God in that moment.

I'm just letting my emotions out.

"God, why? Why in the world is this so hard?

Why in the world are people the way they are?

When is this going to end?"

I have no answer. Other than like [grunting].

If you've never felt that way,

then you've simply not lived.

You've not lived in a way that would bring pain to you.

You've not lived in any environment where there's risk

and you're going to find difficulty.

Life is hard, and when it is God's able

and when we talk with God, prayer is a battle.

It's a battle.

That's the third big idea, and the last big idea for today.

When we talk to God, God doesn't want to hear

these little prayers like, "Oh God,

I thank you for all the little birds up in the sky

and all the precious little children of Scotland."

I don't know why I go to a Scottish accent,

but you know, these correct prayers, they're just nice.

And it's okay to have correct prayers

and feel nice, fine to prayer nice.

But I'll tell you what, when you pray

you're asking something to change.

You're getting real before God.

It is a battle, it is a war.

And if your prayers don't interest you,

they're not going to interest God.

How would you feel if someone is just going to

show up in your college classroom and lecture you

by reading their notes, pre-prepared, you know,

this and this, and you go like,

I don't even need to be here.

You just need to talk to me.

You would feel totally devalued.

How does God feel when all we do

is we recount pre-rehearsed lines,

whether they're reading them

or we've had them drilled into our mind.

Where we're saying this thing because

we think that we should say it.

He wants to hear you and we need Him to hear us.

And this is what we learn in Psalm 137:

Blessed are those who are honest with God.

Blessed are those who wear their emotions

on their sleeves in their time with God.

Maybe if we did that more with God,

we'd be wearing our emotions on our sleeves

less with the innocent person next to us

who just moved a water bottle.

Maybe if we learn how to do this with God,

we'd have less road rage.

Maybe we'd have less fighting on social media.

Maybe we all get a little more happy and joyful.

This is why Psalm 137 exists.

This is because it's the life that God wants you to have,

a life where in the difficulty, life is hard.

And I recognize that God's able

and this is a battle

and I'm going to pray and work through it.

You do that and you will find a peace

that passes all understanding.

This message may hit a bit close to home for you.

I hope it's helping you,

but I also want to pray for you right now.

So let me pray.

God, there's so much difficulty right now.

I know there is.

It's almost like I can feel it

coming through the camera.

These pains and these difficulties are real.

They're not imagined. It's how we feel.

And God, we're not just asking that they would end.

We do ask that they end.

We ask them injustice ends.

We ask that evil that other people does to us,

that other people put on us, we ask that that ends.

But we also ask that ends.

We ask that our feelings of just being crappy,

that that ends, God, wipe them out.

We want to tell you right now how we feel.

We're telling you how we feel

and we're wanting it to go away.

We don't want to keep feeling this way.

I pray that your peace would come and sweep over us

and we would experience You as the Way Maker

that Your Word says that You are.

I pray these things

according to the character identity of Jesus. Amen.

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or made you curious to learn more about us,

you can create a profile at Crossroads.net.

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That's all we have for today.

We'll see you next time on Crossroads.

And Happy Father's Day and happy Juneteenth.