Well, for this evening, Psalm 129 is our next Psalm in our study of the Songs of Ascent. Psalm 129, let me read the text for us, and then we'll pray, and then we'll take a look at it together. Psalm 129. A song of ascents, greatly have they afflicted me from my youth. Let Israel now say, greatly have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowers plowed upon my back. They made their long their furrows. 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 housetops, which withers before it grows up, with which the reaper does not fill his hand, nor the binder of sheaves his arms. Nor those who pass by say, the blessing of the Lord be upon you. We bless you in the name of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we Thank you again for another opportunity that we have to be here again on a Sunday night, an opportunity to worship together, to sing together, and now to hear your word together, your word read, your word preached. And so we ask now for your blessing over this service and your blessing over this preaching of your word for your people. May you bless each one of us in the way that you would have us to be blessed by your word. We ask this now in Jesus' name, amen. So this is one of those psalms where it's kind of difficult to pin down exactly what kind of psalm it is. In this psalm there is the hint of remembrance of what the Lord has done for the people of Israel. There's a hint of lament against the enemies of Israel. There's a hint of thanksgiving for what God has done for the people of Israel. There's a hint of worship And there's even an imprecatory portion that concludes the psalm as he asks for the Lord to judge, if you will, the enemies of God and to bring them down and lay them to waste. But, of course, defining, perhaps, the specific type of psalm that this is isn't really the point. The point of the psalm is the point of the text itself. And this psalm brings to mind what is the title of this message, A Logging for perseverance, a longing for perseverance. The psalm reminds us as God's people to persevere, especially in the midst of trial, to persevere, especially in the midst of persecution, not to allow the trials and the cares and the tribulations of this world to beat us down to the point where we quit. or to cause us to throw in the towel and put ourself on the shelf, if you will, to put ourself, to use a sports metaphor, to put ourself on the bench and take ourselves out of the game. It is a call then to persevere. But here we are also reminded that we don't persevere in our own strength. We don't persevere under our own power. But instead, as God's people, we persevere in the power of God who supplies His Spirit working in and through us to keep us in the midst of tribulation, to keep us in the palm of His hand in the midst of the trial. Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 4.12, not to be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon us, as though something strange were happening, but rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings, that you may also be glad and rejoice when His glory is revealed. Or in Jude verse 24, now to Him That's, of course, God, who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time now and forever. To him who is able to keep you, Jude says. We're in second Corinthians four where Paul says that we have this treasure hidden in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed. but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Christ so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. And on and on and on we could go to all the different examples in the scriptures and the reminders in the scriptures for the people of God to endure the trial, to endure suffering, to endure tribulation, to endure persecution and to persevere to the end. That is what this psalm calls to mind and reminds us of. As we go through this psalm together, I want us to first note the reason that we need to persevere. The reason that we need to persevere, and namely it is because God's people are persecuted. God's people are a persecuted people. The psalmist says, greatly have they afflicted me from my youth. Let Israel now say, greatly have they afflicted me from my youth. In the context of poetry, in the context of psalm and song, repetition provides emphasis. Repetition provides depth to the lament. It provides a sense in which we understand that what I have said in this stanza is important. What I'm pointing out is a deeply troubling thing even. They have afflicted me twice, he says, from my youth. Who has afflicted the people of Israel? Well, we aren't told in the text. It only mentions a general they. And yet we know from the history of Israel That the people of God have been an afflicted people throughout their existence. A people who have been in slavery to Egypt. A people who have been, to the time of the judges, enslaved and conquered and mistreated. The testimony of Israel then has been a testimony of hatred and mistreatment by the world. Why though? If this is the people of God, if this is the nation of God, if this is the chosen holy people of God for His own possession, then why are they not only mistreated, why are they allowed to be mistreated? One reason is because of punishment. We see that in the Scriptures. God routinely uses the pagan nations around Israel as a means of disciplining his wayward people and disciplining his spiritually adulterous people. I mentioned the period of the judges. That period demonstrates that roller coaster of apostasy and punishment and then repentance and then restoration, only for the cycle to be lathered, rinsed and repeated over again. Apostasy, punishment, repentance and restoration. Throughout the book of Judges, the people of Israel deal with the Mesopotamians, They deal with the Moabites. They deal with the Philistines. They deal with the Canaanites. They deal with the Midianites. They deal with the Ammonites. Further even into the history of Israel, they are still being dealt with by God. Even after the monarchy is established and the Davidic throne is established, the people of Israel are constantly beset by the nations around them. So you come into places like Isaiah 10, woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my fury. That's God talking. Against a godless nation I send him, against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoils, seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. That's God saying of Assyria that they are the rod of my anger against Israel because of their apostasy, because of their spiritual adultery. because they have turned their backs on God. The point being then that the persecution that the people of God experience is not random. The hatred that the people of God experience and the nation of Israel experience is not arbitrary. It's not just something that happens to them. There are reasons for it and purposes for it. There are times when The affliction comes upon God's people for the purpose of correction. So that's one reason why the people of God are known as an afflicted and persecuted people. Here's another reason. Another reason is because of the hatred of the world. The reality that the world hates God and the world hates the things of God and therefore the world hates the people of God. This hatred of God is rooted or the evil of the world rather is rooted in this hatred of God. And so you go to familiar Psalm, Psalm number two. where he says and asks the question, why do the nations rage? The people plot in vain. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. The world and its systems and its demonic influence means that it beats itself against God Himself. It wars against God and is antagonistic against God and against the things of God. That hatred and animosity then typically reveals itself in the mistreatment and in the afflicting of the people of God. They are the easiest target. And so the people of God catch the brunt of it. It was true of Israel during their day. Not every affliction, not every persecution, not every conquering, although many of them were, but not every one of them were simply a means of punishment and discipline. Sometimes it was just the reality of living in a fallen world and amongst the enemies of God. And it's true right into today of the church of God. Jesus himself reminds us In Matthew chapter 10, a disciple is not above his master, or teacher rather, nor a servant his master. It's enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. If they call the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household? Or in John 15, remember the word I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. We just read that. And then he goes on to say, if they persecuted me, they will persecute you. To which we simply ask the question, did they persecute him? Yes. Therefore, we will be persecuted as well. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.12. So again, this is nothing new, the affliction of the people of God as we live and move and navigate in a dark and fallen world. The people of God are a persecuted people. It was so, it is so, and it will always be so until the enemies of God are laid at the foot of Jesus. Greatly, he says, they have afflicted me from my youth. And then notice also how he puts it in verse three. The plowers plowed upon my back. They made long their furrows. A vivid imagery imagining the mistreatment of Israel's enemies as a plower who uses the back of Israel as the field for his plow. There are a few things potentially that this imagery could be conveying. It could be a general statement of the depth of mistreatment that Israel has endured. In which case, the long furrows on the back that are made from the plow of the enemies of God could indicate the long length of time that this mistreatment has come against the people of Israel. He even mentions, they've afflicted me from my youth. We don't know how old the psalmist is, but the point is they've afflicted me for a very long period of time. And perhaps that is what is signified by the length of the furrows in the back of this psalmist. Another possibility is that it could be a literal statement of the whippings and beatings that the people of God themselves endured under the oppression of her enemies. In which case, the long furrows would, of course, picture the wounds and scars left behind by the scourgings that would have taken place under the oppression of the enemies of God. But whichever it might be, the point remains the same, that God's people are a persecuted people. And we aren't talking about a soft persecution. We are talking about a hard affliction and persecution that the people of God have endured, suffering anguish and hardship simply for existing and simply for belonging to the Lord. And so if this is the case, then how will God's people survive? If it is true that the world and its systems and its demonic influence beat against God and beat against the people of God in a very literal sense, how will the people of God stand strong in the midst of this harsh reality? That if they persecuted me, they will persecute you. Well, the answer to that question is, though we may be persecuted, We are also a preserved people. We're not only a persecuted people, but we are a preserved people. Notice the end of verse two. After he mentions the second time, greatly have they afflicted me for my youth, he says, yet they have not prevailed against me. Yes, God's enemies may mistreat and they may malign. They may beat and scourge and even torture. The victory for the enemies of God may seem to be a given. And God's enemies may even seem to prosper in this life and in this world. The psalmist exclaims with confidence, yet they have not prevailed. They may appear to win for a time. They may even win a battle. They may even win for a long season of life, but they will not prevail against God's people. They will not win the decisive victory against God's people. Going back to Psalm 2 that I just read, why do the nations rage and plot in vain and set themselves against God? And then Psalm 2, 4 says, He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. He goes on to say, I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You will break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. So even there in Psalm 2, while the nations rage, The Lord lasts. And while the peoples plot, the Lord himself plots as well. And while the kings and the multitudes of the kings of the world gather themselves together, combining their army and combining their strength and combining their might and combining their power to set themselves against the sovereign God, God himself plots as well and puts his king on the throne of Zion. and says, you will take them down and you will prevail. Why have they not prevailed? What's the reason that God's enemies fail to completely eradicate God's people? Well, the reason why is in verse four, when the psalmist says, the Lord is righteous. He has cut the cords of the wicked. The second part of the verse there, he has cut the cords of the wicked, is pretty self-explanatory. And while, again, we don't know the specific situation that the psalmist is describing, we do know here that he ascribes the ultimate victory and the ultimate preservation to Yahweh who has cut the cords of the wicked. But again, why? Why has he cut the cord of the wicked? Why have they not prevailed? The answer is because the Lord is righteous. The Lord is right. Because he is right and because he is just, he preserves his people. Which made me ask the question and start to kind of think about how to answer this. Why is it that that when the psalmist thinks about what it is in the mind and in the heart of God that causes him to preserve his people, what he points to is the righteousness of God. I mean, he could have said the Lord is faithful, and it would have been perfectly true, or the Lord is gracious. And it could have been true. The Lord is merciful and that could have been true as well. But here what the psalmist wants us to remember and what the psalmist chooses to remember and what the psalmist chooses to lift up here is the righteousness of Yahweh as the foundation for why it is that Yahweh preserves his people in the midst of their persecution. Why, of the thousands perhaps of the attributes of God, does he mention righteousness? Here's why I think it's his righteousness that the psalmist calls to mind. Because God is just, or God is righteous in dealing with his people, when He deals with them in relation to the covenant that He made with them. In other words, it doesn't matter what happens to them, the people of God, or even why it happens to them, whether it's punishment or some other reason, God will not forsake His people because He made a covenant with His people that is unconditional. And because He made a covenant with His people that is unconditional, in His righteousness, He cannot and will not break His covenant. This covenant, of course, goes all the way back to the Abrahamic covenant. When the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I'll show you. I'll make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you. I'll curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. That's in Genesis chapter 12. And then it's in Genesis chapter 15 that he seals this promise that he makes with Abram. He seals it with a covenant. And he has Abram slaughter the animals, a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtle dove, and a pigeon. And he has him take the pieces of the heifer and the goat and the ram, and he's cut them in half, and he puts each of the halves on each side. And once he sort of splits the pieces of the sacrifice, it's where Abram is put into a deep sleep. You remember the story. And Abram immediately falls into a deep sleep. And while he's sleeping, a flaming torch and a smoking fire pot passes through the pieces so that God seals himself to his word by an unconditional covenant made with Abram, that this will happen. You will be a nation and you will be my nation. And through you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And it is to this covenant that God bases His preservation of the people of Israel. It is His remembrance, we see in the Old Testament, in the history of Israel, it is God's remembrance of this covenant that causes Him to preserve the people of Israel. During those many days, the king of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry was for rescue from slavery and came up to God. God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel and God knew. And he answered their cries, that's Exodus chapter two. In Leviticus chapter 26, verse 40, he says, if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers and their treachery that they committed against me, and also walking in contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the lands of their enemies, if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. And I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham. And I will remember the land. That's sort of at the end of the giving of the law where God is explaining the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. And he adds that part, that even when there's disobedience, if the people will return to me and turn back to me and confess their iniquity, I'll remember the covenant I made and preserve them. In Psalm 105, we read, O offspring of Abraham, his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen ones. He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded for a thousand generations. The covenant that he made with Abraham is sworn promise to Isaac, which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel an everlasting covenant saying to you, I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance. You remember what happened in the incident of the golden calf, Exodus chapter 32? God is ready to annihilate the people because of their worship of the golden calf. And he tells Moses, this is a stiff-necked people. Let me alone, he tells Moses, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I might make a great nation of you. God's ready to do away with the nation of Israel that he had just saved out of slavery and kind of start over with Moses. And Moses says, O Lord, Why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power, with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from your burning anger. Relent from this disaster against your people. And then there's this is his plea. Remember Abraham and Isaac and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I promised I will give to your offspring and they will inherit it forever. And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. A terrific reminder here that God is a covenant-keeping God. And all of that is wrapped up in the remembrance of the psalmist that God is righteous. And He'll always do what's right. Because He'll always, and therefore rather, He'll always keep His covenant with His people. Which is directly applicable to us today, because for His people today, God deals with us in relation to a covenant, namely a new covenant that He promised through the prophets to bring about. This new covenant that He would put His law in our hearts and right in our minds. This new covenant that He would forgive our sins and our iniquities, remembering them no more. This covenant that He would rip out our stony hearts that are dead toward God and give us hearts of flesh that are alive to God and love Him and desire to serve Him. A new covenant that is sealed for us in the blood of His Son. a spotless sacrifice of a new and better covenant. And so even in the psalm, with the mention of God's righteousness, even now we see the allusion to a new and better covenant than when the psalm was even written. For now the perfect has come. What a promise then, not only of earthly and temporal preservation, but of eternal preservation of his people by the resurrection of a true and better high priest, of a true and better covenant who always lives to make intercession for us and subsequently is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him. We are a preserved people because God is righteous and he will fulfill his covenant promise to his people. So we are persecuted and yet preserved. One more point and we're done. Not only are we persecuted and yet preserved, we are also in the midst of that, on all of that, we are protected. Protected. This protection is shown in the form of a confident prayer that concludes the psalm about the enemies of God. While we just saw that God will preserve His people in His righteousness, here we also see that His enemies will not be preserved. They will lose. They will be destroyed. May all who hate Zion, he says, be put to shame and turn backward. Let them be like the grass on the housetop, which withers before it grows. The picture here is of grass that is up off the ground on the roof of the house and thus having no true root down in the soil to protect it and give it life. up on the housetop where the scorching sun would keep it from properly growing and instead wither it before it is able to yield any fruitful life. And so the picture in verse seven comes up with which the reaper does not fill his hand, nor the binder of sheaves his arms. The prayer here then is a prayer that the enemies of God be scorched and fruitless, rendering them powerless. by His divine power. Notice also that it is these enemies who do not ask for the blessing of the Lord, nor do those who pass by say, the blessing of the Lord be upon you. We bless you in the name of the Lord. Unlike God's people, exemplified in many of the Psalms that we have studied, just in this series of Psalms, God's enemies do not ask for God's blessing. Instead, God's enemies desire the persecution of God's people. God's enemies desire a curse, if you will, upon God's people. And thus they invoke upon themselves the curse of God himself. And so the tables are turned for the enemies of God. who would seek to destroy God and the people of God. Instead, through their own rebellion and through their own hatred, they invite for themselves only destruction and only the wrath of God. In this closing, then, we are reminded to cry out to God, asking Him to deliver us from His enemies and instead to keep us and bless us in the midst of this dark and suffering world. Even Jesus in his model prayer for believers included the petition that we not be led into evil, but instead be delivered from it. And so in the midst of persecution, we are preserved by God and we are protected by God. And ultimately then we are reminded that God is with us so that we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? Hebrews 13.6 or Romans 8. If God is for us, then who can be against us? The promise that we find here then is not a promise of preservation and protection, it's not necessarily a promise that each individual believer will be rescued from each individual earthly calamity and earthly hardship. It's a promise instead that through it all, God will be with us. He will uphold us and he will strengthen us to endure. And thus the final true promise here is that even if we do not experience deliverance in this earthly life, and there's a long history of the people of God who did not experience deliverance in this earthly life, but lost their lives for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of God and for the sake of the faith and for the church. If we do not experience deliverance in this earthly life, we know that we will be delivered ultimately from the only weapon that sin and Satan have against us, and that is death. We will be delivered. 2 Corinthians 1.9 reminds us, indeed, we felt that we had received, this is Paul speaking of himself and his ministry, that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and He will deliver us again. On Him we set our hope that He will deliver us again. And I think part of the hope that Paul is talking about there is not necessarily a hope and a confidence that God will deliver them in an earthly aspect. It is Paul's constant mindset that even if I lose my life, for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of this apostolic ministry that he has given me, even if I lose my life, he will deliver me from death and preserve me and bring me into his presence. That's why Paul can say the kinds of crazy things that he can say, like to live as Christ and to die as gain. I heard a preacher ask the question, you know, what do you do with a preacher like that? What do you do with a guy who's not afraid to live and not afraid to die? He's not afraid to be persecuted and he's not afraid to be martyred. What do you do with a guy that if you leave him free, he's going to go around the whole country preaching the gospel. And if you throw him in jail, he's going to convert all your prisoners and most of your temple guard. What do you do with a guy like that? With this kind of unworldly confidence. So again, while we are persecuted, we also know that we are preserved and we are protected. That's the confidence that we have as we each persevere in our own trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Let's pray. Father, we thank you again for this wonderful word given to us, this wonderful reminder in your word. A reminder that we persevere in the midst of persecution, in the midst of hardship, in the midst of trial and tribulation. But of course, the even better reminder that you are with us, that you are preserving us and protecting us and strengthening us and encouraging us and guiding us and lifting us up and helping us. We ask for your help. We submit our feebleness and our powerlessness to your help. And we would be good and faithful witnesses And then we would hear the words one day, you have done well, good and faithful servant. We ask this blessing over us now in Jesus name. Amen.