1. In the year 2003, April 15 fell on a Tuesday. It is a day that I will always remember, not because it was tax day, but because it was the day my dad called to tell me that my four-year-old sister, adopted in 1999 from Guatemala, had been in a drowning accident and had been airlifted to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. As I talked to my brother later that night I learned that the prognosis did not look good. Lauralee was in a coma, likely with severe brain damage. Death was a real possibility, as was a lifelong vegetative state. For three days we lived in uncertainty. During that time Joni and I made the trip from Louisville to Little Rock. On Friday morning, which happened to be Good Friday, as we sat in the waiting room outside the ICU, Lauralee woke up. At that moment my dad took my two brothers and me aside into a private room, where we all got down on our knees and gave thanks to God.
2. That day was the beginning of a long road ahead for Lauralee. She did have brain damage, so she had to relearn motor skills and language skills. We were amazed at how quickly she progressed with therapy. And then six weeks to the day of her accident, we had a homecoming celebration for her. Lauralee’s story is a story of survival, and I tell it because, like many survival stories that you no doubt have as well, it illustrates for us the sheer joy and gratitude that we often feel on these occasions. Lauralee’s homecoming was not an occasion to lament all that she had suffered and all that we had suffered with her. It was not an occasion to mourn for the doors that have now been forever closed to her, as she still lives with some effects from the damage to her brain. It was a time to celebrate, for we had seen her come to the very brink of death, and yet we had seen the Lord spare her. Survival experiences—whether related to the survival of your body, your emotional well-being, or your faith—are important because they strip us of our sense of entitlement. When Lauralee was lying in a coma in Little Rock, I knew that God did not owe us another single day with her. And I was reminded of the fact that every single day he had given us in the past with her, and every single day he would give us in the future, was a gift of sovereign grace. Survival stories open our eyes to the grace of God that is always present but that we so often fail to see.
3. Psalm 129 is a song that was sung by Jewish pilgrim survivors on their way to Jerusalem to worship. It is a song that looks back over the story of Israel, which is a story of survival, and celebrates the grace of the Lord. Moreover, it is also a song that stands on the shoulders of past grace and reaches forward in anticipation of receiving the future grace of God. We too are pilgrim survivors. For two-thousand years the church has been the target of Satanic attacks through violence, persecution, deception, temptation, and compromise. Many churches throughout history have, slowly over time, lost sight of the gospel. Many professing believers have abandoned the faith once for all delivered to the saints. But to this day, we have survived. And on we go, following the road toward the heavenly Jerusalem, singing the songs of a thankful, surviving people. May we learn to view ourselves as pilgrim survivors, and may we give praise to the Lord as a result. Specifically, let us follow the pattern of this psalm, which divides neatly into two equal sections, and praise the Lord in two ways, one way looking back and the other way looking forward.
First,
1. I make the point this way because I want to communicate how absolutely essential gratitude is in the Christian life. Gratitude forces us to look away from ourselves and to the kindness of another. As such, it is inherently humbling. Without it, we slip into an entitlement mentality and begin to believe that every good gift that comes to us from above is not really a gift at all but a debt. And those who feel that God is indebted to them have no understanding of the gospel of grace.
2. Notice how the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem sing of their gratitude to God. First they recount their afflictions. Notice that the same clause is repeated in verses 1 and 2: “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth.” The word “greatly” could also be translated “often,” indicating the frequency of afflictions in Israel’s history. “From my youth” refers to the beginning of the nation of Israel either in Egypt or at the time of the exodus from Egypt. Verse 3 employs a gruesome metaphor to make Israel’s afflictions more vivid: “The plowers plowed upon my back; they made long their furrows.” The enemies of Israel had cut into them the way a farmer cuts furrows into a field. They had shown no lack of resolve, for they had made the furrows long on Israel’s back. It is truly an image of excruciating pain. What we gather from these three verses is that Israel’s afflictions were prolonged—they had been happening “from my youth”—, they were frequent—they had occurred “often” since the early days of the nation—, and they were severe—like long furrows cut into the back of a man. Israel’s many enemies—the Egyptians, the Amalekites, the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Assyrians, Babylonians, and a host of others, had been relentless in their hostility to Israel throughout her history. While Israel experienced relative peace at times, especially under Solomon, by and large her history was one of great suffering, war, and opposition.
3. And yet, after the pilgrim singers repeat the clause, “Greatly [or often] have they afflicted me from my youth” twice in order to build the tension, this is how the tension is resolved at the end of verse 2: “yet they have not prevailed against me.” Israel as a people has survived. Whether at the Red Sea, during the conquest of Canaan, in the tumultuous period of the Judges and later of the divided kingdom, through exile and return, Israel is still there. When this psalm was sung, there was still a Jerusalem to go to, still a temple at which to worship. God had preserved a remnant, and through that remnant he had preserved a nation and a promise of redemption.
4. So these pilgrim survivors on the way to Jerusalem sing of his deliverance. In verse 4 they say, “The LORD is righteous; he has cut the cords of the wicked.” They celebrate the righteousness of the Lord, who in an expression of his righteousness, or his commitment to do what is right, has intervened to deliver his oppressed people and has in the process overthrown their wicked oppressors. The “cords of the wicked” most likely refers to the cords that harness the enemy’s plow to the animal that pulls it. By cutting their cords, the Lord has disarmed the wicked so that they may no longer dig long furrows on Israel’s back. The triumph of God over the wicked vindicates him as righteous and redounds to his everlasting praise among his people. God is glorified when his enemies are cut down.
5. We too look back to the Lord’s deliverance in his triumph over our enemies. Paul writes in Colossians 2:13-15: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” The record of debt that stood against us because of our sin, the basis of Satan’s accusations against is, God nullified by nailing it to the cross. In doing so he stripped Satan’s forces of their power to accuse and claimed victory for us. In his righteousness our God has cut the cords of the wicked through the death and resurrection of Christ.
6. Our deliverance at the cross is an event we must always remember. Every week, when we come to the Lord’s table, we do so in remembrance of our Lord, as he commanded. And as we remember, we give thanks. It is no accident that this meal has long been known as the “eucharist,” which means “thanksgiving.”
7. What happens to a church that does not remember? What happens to a church that begins to assume the gospel rather than to proclaim it constantly in word and sacrament, to sing about it, to pray it? When the gospel is assumed, it is eventually left behind. Churches all over this country are either in the process of forgetting the gospel, or they have already forgotten it because they make no effort to remember. They have become like Israel in Judges 2:10: “And all that generation [Joshua’s generation] also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.” My dear brothers and sisters, that is not you. And I thank God it is not. Here we live and die by the gospel. Let us do so even more, as we look back to what God has done for us in Christ and live in the overflow of gratitude, not entitlement. We are survivors who have been delivered from the devil, from spiritual death, from the wrath of God, and we are on our way to the heavenly Jerusalem. Let us go forth singing of the Lord’s deliverance.
This song also looks forward and beckons us to do so as well. So in addition to thanking God for his past deliverance, let us also
1. Gratitude looks back to what God has done. Faith looks forward to what he will do. Here the pilgrim survivors on the way to Jerusalem, knowing that the God who has delivered Israel in the past will do so in the future, look forward and offer a praise-prayer, asking God to claim victory over all of his enemies and doing so in a celebratory way that anticipates the very victory that is requested. Verses 5-8 are a prayer of imprecation, a spoken curse.
2. But it is an imprecation against whom? Verse 5 identifies the recipients of this curse as “all who hate Zion.” When we read this we must keep in mind the importance of Zion, or Jerusalem, for Israel. Zion is the place of God’s dwelling on earth. It is the meeting place between heaven and earth. All who hate Zion set themselves not only against Israel but against God. This prayer identifies the recipients of the imprecation as those who resolve to oppose God and his people.
3. What exactly does the prayer request? It asks that all who hate Zion might be put to shame and turned back. I have never been in combat before, but I can imagine there is no sweeter feeling for an army to see the enemy advancing against them only to be turned back in shame and defeat. May all who touch the apple of God’s eye find themselves in such a predicament!
4. In order to make their desire more vivid, the pilgrim singers employ a simile to express it in verses 6-8. Verse 6 reads, “Let them be like the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up.” In the ancient near east the roofs of the houses were flat, and it was not unusual for grass to sprout up on them. But being on top of a house, there was no deep soil in which to drive down roots, so any grass that grew on top of a house was destined to wither quickly when it came under the hot middle-eastern sun. The pilgrim singers desire all haters of Zion to be as transient, short-lived, and empty as roof grass. Let them wither before they are full grown. Let them pass away as nothing before the eternal, immutable power of the Lord. Verse 7 carries the idea farther. The grass on the roof that withers is not grass that is gathered up by the reaper to make hay. It is not something the binder of sheaves collects. It is of no value and is, therefore, never harvested. Verse 8 takes it still one step farther. If a person passing by a field saw someone out in the field gathering up a harvest, it was customary for the passerby to give a word of blessing. We see this in Ruth 2:4: “And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, ‘The LORD be with you!’ And they answered, ‘The LORD bless you.’” It was a kind way of calling down the blessing of God on a harvest. The pilgrim singers want their enemies to be like roof grass that withers and over which the blessing of God is never spoken. They want the haters of Zion to be dried up quickly by the sun so that they may perish and never be heard from again. This is their imprecation. This is their hope. This is their celebration.
5. We too look not only to the past grace of God at the cross but also to the future grace of God when he will claim final victory over all who hate Zion. This hope is expressed in particular in two messianic psalms. Psalm 110:1 reads, “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” Psalm 2:7-9 says, “I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” This is a promise to grasp by faith. It is a hope for which we must pray and a future of which we must sing.
6. But what about Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:43-48, that we should love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who persecute us? Can we fulfill Jesus’ command and join Israel in a song of imprecation against the haters of Zion? Yes.
7. The problem comes in when we modern people try to domesticate Jesus and turn him into a modern, liberal pacifist. There have been many people who have viewed Jesus’ teachings as a “higher ethic” that overturns and corrects some of the outdated, barbarous ideas of the Old Testament. There is a tendency, even among evangelicals, to set up a contrast between the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New, revealed in Jesus. That is precisely the kind of distinction we must not make. There is a better way forward.
8. We must recognize that Jesus’ command that we love our enemies rests on two theological realities. First, wrath belongs to God, not to us. Jesus does not try to obliterate or soften God’s wrath. He reminds us that it is God’s wrath, not ours. And so we must not retaliate against those who harm us personally. Second, there is always the possibility that God’s enemies may be reconciled to him if they will turn from their sin. Look at us. We are living proof of that fact. So let us bless those who curse us and pray for those who persecute us, longing for them to turn from sin and find forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
9. But loving our enemies in this way does not cancel out our ability to sing and celebrate in an imprecatory way with Israel. Think of it this way: the risen Christ, who now has all authority in heaven and on earth, will at any moment return to this earth to put all of his enemies under his feet. The armies of heaven are poised and ready to attack the city of those who hate Zion. But in this interval of time, our King has offered terms of amnesty to all rebels who will throw down their weapons and surrender to his authority. Any and all who turn from their rebellion and appeal to Christ for mercy will be welcomed into his favor before his wrath comes down. We want people to experience that mercy, and so we pray for them to repent. But that does not mean we want our King to abandon his plans to put down the rebellion. May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward. May our righteous God again cut the cords of the wicked, for the good of his people and the glory of his name.
1. If you have never put your faith in Christ, then you belong to the ranks of those who hate Zion. You may not realize it, but every moment that you refuse to turn from sin and embrace Jesus Christ by faith is a moment of rebellion against God. Do not prolong your rebellion until it is too late. Do not end up like roof grass that withers and passes away under the curse of God. Surrender now. Turn to Christ in faith, and he will receive you. Identify with him publicly through baptism and union with this church. Talk to any of our pastors or members if you want to know more about the good news I have proclaimed to you.
2. Those of you who are trusting in Christ and are members in good standing with a church, let us come to the table now. Let us eat and drink in remembrance of the victory Christ claimed over our enemies at the cross. Let us eat and drink as a foretaste of the celebration feast that is to come when God will put all of his enemies under his feet.
3. Let us sing the song of pilgrim survivors. Let us sing with gratitude for God’s past deliverance. Let us sing with faith in God’s future victory. Let us sing as we march on to Zion. We will not get there without suffering, without opposition, without hardships to endure. But by the grace of God, we will survive, and we will get there.