Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn to Psalm 129? Psalm 129, as we continue on in this little series in the Pilgrim Psalms are growth and discipleship in the midst of the worshiping community. Jan and I are just coming back from two weeks vacation. We were driving back into Charlotte yesterday and Jan said, wouldn't it be great to be on vacation all the time? And I said, yeah, it would. But then as we got to think about it, we both said, nah, it wouldn't be a good idea. We had a great time. We did real exciting things, like read and read. I read five books and almost a sixth one and got to go to a lot of restaurants that we usually don't go to and went to see Spider-Man because Jane wanted to see it. I went out and bought some Spider-Man pajamas afterwards. We stayed at the homes of some gracious folks in our church, both at Hilton Head and at Alopombs and got to be with all the kids and grandkids. We had a great time. But we couldn't stay on vacation all the time because if we did, we would lose our edge. I noticed that everything, Jane got a tan. I got a burn. We're just in great shape for the coming year. Except that I noticed that even after two weeks vacation, I began to lose a little bit of a spiritual edge. Something about the routine, the warp and wound for everyday life that is the real instrument of that God uses to cause us to go in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Because perhaps the easiest thing to do in the Christian life is to quit, is to give in or to give up, to stop trying. Now we have a lot of euphemisms that we use to explain what that is. We talk about an older person who mellows out, whatever it means to mellow out, or sometimes the youth version of that is to be cool, tend like you don't really care because really you're afraid. Sometimes we talk about retiring as if somehow we could become a Christian emeritus. We say, you know, I've paid my dues. I put in my time. As if somehow there's just a 30-year period in which you really have to struggle to go on with the Lord and then get some kind of spiritual watch and spiritual retirement. The reason we tend to live like that, the reason why we find so few people who are older and still have their edge, still have their excitement and zeal for the Lord is because when the going gets rough, we give in and we give up. Now the reason for that is because we tried to build our lives around perennial vacations. One exciting, new, unexperienced thing after another. We want to go from wave to wave excitement and novelty and passion. That's how we live. In fact, that has become the buzz word of our evangelicalism today. Passionate. I'm passionate about youth ministry. Well, maybe for five years. I'm passionate about, I'm really excited about marriage ministry. For a while, you know, I'm really committed. I'm really passionate about pioneer ministry going somewhere where nobody's ever been until you get engaged and married. That word passionate has been introduced into our DNA, probably singularly by John Piper. John's passionate about everything. And last year John took a sabbatical because he said and I quote, I was losing my edge. In all of my activity and all of my ministry, he said there were things in my relationships with people I worked with, things between my wife and me. Sin habits to begin to creep back in. And so I needed to take some time off. I admire John Piper for his passion and for his honesty and his humility and for admitting that passion cannot carry us indefinitely. Yeah, how many times passions mentioned in the New Testament? Three times. Here they are. Galosians chapter three. Put to death therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, and passion. First Thessalonians four. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. They are to abstain from sexual immorality and that each of you know how you to control your own body and holiness and honor and not in passion. Romans chapter one, for this very reason, God gave them over to dishonourable passions. Now you'll say unfair pastor, that's unfair. When we use the word passionate, we mean zealous. We mean excited about something. We mean enthusiastic, all right? Fair enough. How many times are those words used in the New Testament? Zeal. Well, if you count the whole Bible, the word zealous occurs 51 times. Another of those 51 times, only 14 times is it used in a positive way. It's usually those two words kenah in Hebrew and zealous in Greek are translated jealousy, anger, indignation, strong desire, fervency, or covetousness. 14 times it's used in a positive way, always about God. Never about us. My point is that the Bible does not major on passion and zeal. It acknowledges that those things are there, but as in most strong disturbances of the emotions they are tainted by a fallen nature. With the Bible talks much more about, much more than passion and zeal is something called perseverance, or endurance, or steadfastness, or patience. What one poet called a long obedience in the same direction. In the New Testament, it's the word hupomone. It is translated patience, perseverance, endurance, or steadfastness, depending upon the context. It comes from two words hupo under and meno to remain, hupo meno, hupo mone in its noun form, to remain under something, to outlast something, to be stronger than something else, to have staying power, endurance, steadfastness, perseverance. It's part of God's plan for our salvation. If you remember last year, when we preached through the order of salvation, the order of soluteus, what God takes us through in a roughly chronological way to bring us out of death and into eternal life, we begin with predestination. Then there's the effectual calling of God, God calling us to Christ in the gospel, regeneration where we're born again, conversion through the gifts of repentance and faith, then we're justified, adopted. We enter into the process of sanctification where we gain assurance of our salvation, and then comes this thing, the redded stepchild, the least preached upon element of the order of salvation, the perseverance of the saints. It is a major thing in the writings and the speaking of Jesus Christ and His apostles. Christ said, they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another, and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray, and because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold, but he who endures to the end will be saved. Peter in a second letter said, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge of self-control and self-control with steadfastness. He goes on to say that when we have these virtues in our life, we make our election and calling sure. James, count it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its full effect in you, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Paul commands Timothy to flee from sinful things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, and perseverance. He says in Titus, older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, sound in love, and in perseverance. After he tells us to put on the full armor of God to stand firm in our spiritual fight, Paul says to that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. Even the Apostle John enters into this endorsement of endurance by saying, at the end of the book of Revelation, here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. Endurance, perseverance, steadfastness, these are necessary elements in our spiritual walk and major points of emphasis by Christ and His Apostles. So it should not surprise us that as we're looking at these songs of discipleship, these songs of ascent, these pilgrim songs, they become to one on perseverance. We began this journey in Psalm 120 with discontent and we've worked through all the crescendoing, escalating, expanding works of the Holy Spirit on our life, faith in God, joy in the Lord, hope in the community, contentment and blessings for the family, and now we come to step number 10, prevailing perseverance, the enduring steadfast, patient faith that will not give in and will not give up, Psalm 129. Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth. Let Israel now say, greatly have they afflicted me from my youth, if they have not prevailed against me, the plowers ploughed upon my back, they made long therefor us. The Lord is righteous. He has cut the cords of the wicked. May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turn backward. Let them be like grass on the house tops which withers before it grows up, with which the Reaper does not fill us hand, nor the binder of sieves his arms, nor do those who pass by say the blessing of the Lord be upon you. We bless you in the name of the Lord. Little Psalm of eight verses, two stanzas, four verses each, the first four verses, talk about facing the reality of spiritual attack. The second four verses, the second stanza, talk about facing the reality of spiritual anger, and in between those two little stanzas is one spiritual absolute, spiritual attack, spiritual anger, a spiritual absolute. That's the outline of this pilgrim poet and that's what we're going to do this morning. We're going to look first of all at facing the reality of spiritual attacks. It's one thing that Perseverance does is that perhaps the other virtues are maybe a little bit laxon. Perseverance faces the ugly realities of life. And here's the reality that we all, if we live in this rule, will be under some great and painful spiritual attack. There's no escaping it. It happens from our childhood all through life. That's what he says. Greatly have they afflicted me or perhaps as the new American standard says, persecuted me. Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth. Let Israel now repeat this. Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth. They have not prevailed against me. The flowers ploughed upon my back. They made long their furrows. Now here's a picture of a guy who's trusting in God, who has joy in the Lord, hoping his community, blessings in his family, but he's not going to do no spiritual reality. He has, from his childhood, experienced great affliction. He says, from my youth, they have done this. From my childhood, living in a fallen world as brutal, and if you don't believe that, look at the evening news. And it's even more brutal for a Christian. And if you doubt that, then go to Google and type in the word martyr and see what comes up on the screen. This is a difficult and a dangerous world we live in. And this little psalmist acknowledges that. He gives a martyr's witness in painfully graphic language. Greatly have they afflicted me, yet they have not prevailed against me. They ploughed upon my back and made long their furrows. He pictures someone with a horse and a plow and he's got the reins of the horse and they're dragging that plow across his back where they press down into deep and long furrows. It's the word in Hebrew that means to show hostility towards someone. Hence, the new American standard translates to persecution. It means to afflict, to attack, to cause distress, to trouble, to persecute harass, to be the adversary or enemy of one or another, and to be hostile towards others. It carries the idea of someone doing purposeful harm to you because they hate you. It's a strong word, but it's an accurate word. And he says it has been greatly done to me. Or perhaps, as another translation says, many times. They've made literally, this is how it reads, plowing long furrows on my back, cutting deep and long into my person, into my soul. Who? Who is doing this? He says they, the plowers, all who hate Zion. These are the people who hate the city of God. They have no use for the Church of Jesus Christ. They are devoid of the Holy Spirit. They're not under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They are opposed to spiritual things, hostile to the gospel and to the people who believe in God, who become citizens of his kingdom and members of in church. They have only hatred and hostility and animosity. Who are these people? Well, they're oftentimes the unconverted in our family. Among our circle of friends and co-workers, the people in our lives who have no use for God and those who like him. Perhaps this man writes as a representative of the nation of Israel because he is a Jew. And no people have experienced the hatred of the world because of their faith more than the Jews have. But you know, he doesn't write like that. He writes as an individual. He writes in the first person. This is a man who has experienced as an individual the animosity and the outrageous abuse of people who hate those who love God. They have wounded him from childhood. And those wounds have a way of working their way into the adult life where they're not forgotten. Now, this little psalm gives us two choices. You read carefully. You read between the lines and you catch the ethos, the paythos of his little psalm. He's giving us two choices. We can respond to these things that we've experienced as victims. We can lick our psychological wounds for the rest of our life and enter into therapy or counseling without end, without cure, so we can cope with our difficulties. We can live with demons that we never exercise or defeat. We can surrender to a melancholy, fearful, depressive, introspective spirit. We can wine. We can always play the victim. And we can search for excitement and passion like a drug to help us get through the next 24 hours. That's option one, the victim. Option two is the victor. We can overcome through perseverance. We can simply outlast the powers until they give up, die, or convert it. But we don't have to give in. If you're not careful, and you think about that, you say, well, we become pacifists. We just bear our backs to the world and let them continue to plow it will. No? That's not what this little fellow does. Because he faces not only the spiritual reality of these attacks, he faces the spiritual out of his anger. He gets angry about it and that's the second stanza. The reality of his spiritual anger, verse five, may all who hate Zion be put to shame and turn backward, let them be like the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up with which the reaper does not fill his hand nor the binder of sheaves his arm, nor those who pass by say the blessing of the Lord be upon you. We bless you in the name of the Lord. This little psalmist imprecates God. In other words, he invokes God. He calls upon God to bring a curse and a judgment upon the people who are plowing upon his soul. This is part of the imprecatory Psalms, those harsh, vindictive, vengeful sections of the psalm that are in various places throughout the Psalter asking God to judge the wicked. Now, C.S. Lewis has a hard time with these things. He says, in some of the psalms, the spirit of hatred, which strikes us in the face is like the heat from a furnace mouth. In others, the same spirit ceases to be frightful only to become to a modern mind almost comic in its naivety. But then Lewis goes on to say, we can still see in the worst of their maladictions how these poets were in a sense near to God. Though hideously distorted by human instruments, something of the divine voice can be heard in these passages. And Lewis says, even though we may not enter into such violent expressions of our emotions, we can hear God speaking through them. When people plow upon our backs, for a long time, in evil, abusive, bullying, demeaning, destructive ways, it is morally upright to become indignant. And it is morally wrong to be passive. Moral outrage is part of moral righteousness. Even if it does flow out of our personal pain. You know the proof of that, folks, is that if we go to the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, and we look at chapter 6, and chapter 16, and chapter 19, we see the saints in heaven who are glorified. Now that means they have no sin in them. They are sinlessly perfect. And they are asking God to take vengeance on those who persecuted them and to destroy them. Sinless angels and saints in heaven are asking God they're implicating him to bring to an end even if violently those forces that persecute the saints.
That may be hard for us to accept, but that is in the Bible. That's what the Holy Spirit says in this word that the saints in heaven are doing now. They may not know about our particular situations, but they know that the saints are suffering and they are calling upon God to rise up and act. How long, O Lord, until you avenge our blood on the wicked, who martyred the saints. They're exact words. Eugene Peterson doesn't struggle with these things as much as C. S. Lewis does. He says, we care about morality, about justice, about righteousness. The way of faith centers and absorbs our lives, and when someone makes the way difficult, throws stumbling blocks in the path of the innocent, creates difficulties for the young in faith, and the unpractice and obedience, there is normally and naturally anger. For perseverance is not resignation, putting up with things the way they are. Staying in the same old rut year after year, being a doormat for people upon which to wipe their feet. Endurance is not a desperate hanging on, but a traveling from strength to strength. Perseverance is triumphant in the life. It is learning what Charles Williams called the passion of patience. There is a point where perseverance stands up and says, no, no more. Enough is enough. I'm not saying that when we do that we're sinlessly perfect. We often and always have a mixture of sin and righteousness and a moral indignation. What I am saying is that is inevitable and good to do that, to say no more. There comes a time when a wife has to say to her husband, no more. You hit that boy one more time and I'm taking him and we're leaving until you could help for your anger. No more. You go out and get a job and support your family or I'm taking the children and divorcing you. No more, mama. No more of your manipulation. I'm a married woman now and my husband and I have decided to go a different way. You have no say in what we do. No more. No more of this alcoholism. No more of this immorality. No more of this physical and mental and spiritual abuse. Enough is enough
and it's not wrong to do that. In fact, my friends, the best thing you can do for a bully is to confront him. You've seen all through the news and on the internet, this sweet little grandma that was a monitor on a school bus taking 10 minutes of verbal and physical abuse and threats from these teenage boys. There's been an outflow of sympathy for this woman. Millions of dollars have been donated to her. But where were the people on the bus to help her when it was happening? Where were the parents who came to her aid quickly? What were the other students doing when these five boys were doing it? What was the bus driver doing? Where was their moral courage to confront abuse? There was a boy in my school named Michael Callahan. Michael was a bully and his hobby was beating up on skinny kids had red hair freckles and glasses. Michael Callahan beat me up once a week through eight years of school. And then in the eighth grade, something happened. I grew taller than Michael Callahan, but he didn't notice that. So one day he took my hand in a headlock and he read it into the brick wall and without thinking I turned around and smashed him in the face and knocked him flat on his back. There's probably 500 kids on the playground and one breath they all met because they saw my life flashing before their eyes. Michael Callahan stood up and did nothing. And he never bothered me again. Now children listen, you can't do that now. See, now if you do that, you'll be expelled from school. And your parents will be sued. You won't be able to go to college, practice law or medicine. You'll be expelled from the United States and have to go live and sweep in the rest of your life. I'm not advocating physical violence. I'm simply using an illustration that people who plow upon our backs will continue to do so and too, through perseverance we say, no more, enough is enough. I'm not going to take this anymore. I'm going to stand in the Lord. See, I'm not asking you to take actions against them. That's not what this Psalmist does. Between the spiritual reality of attack and the spiritual reality of his anger, there is a spiritual absolute. There is, as one commentator says, a cornerstone sentence in Psalm 129, it is this, the Lord is righteous. Verse 4, look at it. There's the salvation. There's the grace and the hope. There's the victory. There's the perseverance. The Lord is righteous. He cuts the cords of the wicked. Here's a picture of Jesus Christ, the righteous Lord, cutting the reins that drives the horse that digs the plow in. Take the reins out of the hands of the persecutor and the plow won't work. Here is a reliance upon the righteous Christ to restrain evil, to use it sovereignly to perfect us, causing all things to work together for our good, to use these long frows and these painful experiences to convert us, to change us, even to convert and redeem those who plow upon us. Christ using these things to strengthen us so that we can endure and prevail and bear fruit, to draw us closer to him, draws closer into grace, to make us strong, to teach us how to forgive, finally, to make us realize how good God has been to us for all the evil we have done to others. You cannot face the righteous Lord without coming to two conclusions. Number one, God has been good to us. All the people and all of the things that were intended by the evil one, he's the bully behind all of the bullying. All that the devil intended to do to destroy you has not worked because of the righteous Jesus Christ who's overcome those things, replacing evil with good and pain with grace. But also when you face the righteous Christ, you have to realize all the times you and I plowed upon someone else's back. We were often the subject of this prayer and sometimes the object, oh Lord, please make Michael Ross stop that. Put him to shame, turn him back, calls him to wither up in blow away, refuse to bless him. That's what he asks. He doesn't ask for the death of these people. He says may all who hate Zion be put to shame. May they be embarrassed about what they're doing. May they be turned backward. The word can mean repent to turn around. Turn them around, Lord, send them in another direction, calls them to wither like grass that sprouts and has no reign. Finally, if they refuse, don't bless them. Don't let anyone say the Lord bless you. We bless you from Zion. This is the righteous Jesus Christ acting on our behalf. And it's a focus on him. What he's going to do to bring these things to an end, how he's going to step up on the playground and put the bully in his place, that is the focus of this song. Eugene Peterson says, the central reality for the Christian is the personal, unalterable persevering commitment that God makes to him through Jesus Christ. Perseverance is not the result of our determination. It is the result of God's faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina, but because God in Christ is righteous. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less to our own. Finding the meaning of our lives, not by proving into our moods and our motives and our morals, but by believing more and more in God's will and purpose for our life. Discipleship is making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasm, our excitement, our passions. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance. And perseverance is what gives us the victory. Considered all joy, my friends, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect, that you may be mature and complete and lacking in nothing. Do you know why folks we tend to go from thrill to thrill, excitement to excitement? Passion to passion. It's simple if you think about it. Because we're not like this guy in Psalm 129. If you look at the Psalm and look away it's physically laid out, the literary flow, what is the very center piece of that Psalm? It's first four. The Lord is righteous. This little guy has what we call an organizing center to his life. It's the righteousness of Christ, of God. I call it the organizing center because it's that reality, the righteous God in him and in his life that causes everything else to make sense. It organizes his life around central person and a grand purpose. He has realized that the one thing God wants for him is that he be like Christ, that he be righteous not only legally because he's justified in some passively, but actively in his sanctification that grows in the glorification, that when he closes his eyes in death and opens them in eternity, he is as Paul says just like Christ. Christ's likeness is the organizing center, the grand principle, the great purpose of this fellow's life because it's God's purpose for our life. Paul came to realize that. Listen to what he wrote. Listen carefully. To what he wrote in Philippians chapter 3, he said, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and calp them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may myself attain to the resurrection of the dead, not that I have already attained it, or I'm already made perfect, but this one thing I do, I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. I do not consider myself as making it on my own, but for getting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the price of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, not that I have already attained Christ's likeness, but this one thing I do, I live in the power of his resurrection and and the fellowship of his sufferings. The power of his grace and the furrowing on my back combined to drive me toward the upward call of God which is not an easy life, not an endless vacation, not passion, not excitement, not zeal, but to be like Christ, and that's why these things are happening to me. That is why I struggle with my anger and my moral outrage. That is why I look to the center of things which is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You know of all people, Paul could have become a whiner, a victim, another Jew that went to endless Holocaust reunions, old, bitter, resentful, but he didn't. If you want to read about the furrows on his back, just turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 11, all that he suffered for Christ's sake, but he didn't give into that spirit, nor did he give up. He said by the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace toward me was not vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than all the rest of them, but it was not I, but the grace of God that was working in me. The grace of God helped him to prevail and persevere because he focused on the Lord who was righteous. I need to tell you something. Paul wrote that in Philippians 3 when he was about my age. He bent a Christian for 32 years, a pastor for 15, a missionary for 14, in prison for four, and he was with him two to three years of his own martyrdom and death. He was an old man, but he'd learned that those who ploughed upon his back could not prevail, that the righteous Christ and him made him the prevailer. What is so ironic in this little text is the image of those who do evil to us. They make long furrows, but they are short grass. Did you notice that? They make long rows of pain in our life, but they are like withered grass, short, here, then gone. They don't last. They don't prevail because they're evil, and they're up against Jesus Christ, who's righteous, and in the face of Christ, evil never has a chance.
We need to focus less on those who are plowing upon our back, those who've hurt us in the past, or hurting us now, and focus all of our attention on this organizing center, Jesus Christ. That will enable us to grow, to mature, to prevail, to endure, for the one who endures to the end will be saved. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this magnificent truth in four precious words. The Lord is righteous. You could have said in the Psalm that the Lord is good, and that is true. That the Lord is gracious. That is absolutely true. That the Lord is holy, compassionate, upright, just, but you did not. Your spirit said, the Lord is righteous, always doing what is right, even as people plow upon our backs, causing spiritual and emotional scars for years to come. You were causing these things to work together for the good of our steadfast and during prevailing perseverance so that we might be saved. It was your son who told us, the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this perseverance, this endurance, is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a work of His grace in our life, a work in the order of salvation by which we stand in Christ, and more importantly, Christ stands for us so that we do not give in, we do not give up. We are not swept away in the rising tide of evil. What hope and encouragement there is in this Psalm, we find in Jesus Christ, we thank You for Him, for His righteousness that He's willing to share with us now, and then build into us through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit so that we stand in position and live in practice as righteous people. There may be some here who are at the point of quitting or perhaps half quit because they lack this faith in Jesus Christ and they have not His righteousness or His Spirit, and I pray. I pray for them this morning, Lord, that you would open up their hearts and minds to repent to their sins, to forsake their giving up, to cling to Christ and faith, that you would cause them to be born again and born to the Spirit, that you would give your Spirit to them, and with Him this work of perseverance. We do not want to live lives of victims, but we want to be more than conquerors to Him who loved us, that is Jesus Christ, who will assure us that nothing will separate us from the love of God because Christ is righteous and He stands for us. And we thank You and praise You for this, in Jesus' name, amen.