Introduction
Pastor Eugene Peterson tells a story from his childhood—a story about having to deal with enemies. For him it came in the form a school bully who beat him up every day after school. It seemed no matter how young Eugene tried to avoid him—in the forms of alternate routes and detours—this bully always stalked him and found him. When he found out Eugene was a Christian, he starting calling Eugene a “Jesus-sissy,” and poor Eugene kept trying to remember Jesus’ words, “Bless those who persecute you” and “turn the other cheek.” Then one day when this bully came at him, Eugene snapped. He grabbed this bully, threw him to the ground and began hitting him. And rather than telling this bully to say, “Uncle,” Eugene forced this defeated bully to say, “I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” And he did. He said it. As Peterson says of the bully, “Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert.”
Even very young Christians can have enemies. Now, I don’t know that any Christian, young or not, should handle enemies this way. And I don’t think Peterson would either. Jesus does tell us to love our enemies. But this story reminds us that we do have enemies—we as Christians are not without adversaries who will do their best to make our following Jesus as difficult and miserable as possible.
But there’s more than one kind of enemy. The passage that was read from Ephesians warns against the “wiles of the devil.” It spoke of how “our struggle is not against flesh and blood.” An enemy of the Christian is any thing that makes them want to stop walking in the way of Jesus, anything that persecutes them for walking in this way and tries to tempt us away from our first and greatest Love: the Lord God Himself.
We should expect opposition
The first point we can get from Psalm 129 is that we should expect opposition because of our relationship with God. Peterson came to expect that bully to be just around the corner. There are always going to be those who do attack, abuse, insult, and otherwise persecute those who are followers of God. We shouldn’t be surprised when it happens.
There are other psalms testify to the perennial threat of enemies. Psalm 3 says “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me. Many are saying to me, ‘There is no help for you in God.’” Psalm 7 says “O Lord, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me.” There are others, including the Psalm 56, which we heard today in our call to worship: “Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me; all day long foes oppress me; my enemies trample on me all day long, for many fight against me . . . All day long they seek to injure my cause.” Our Psalm says in verses 1, 2: “Often they have attacked me from my youth.”
In this psalm the opposition is directed at God through people of Israel—“opposition to God’s people was also opposition to God.” Zion, or Israel, is God’s place, God’s city. How often do Christians and the church come under fire by people who are angry with God? How often are Christians treated in the basis of what someone thinks about God? We become the lightning rod for the world’s opposition to God’s ways. The church is Zion insofar as it is also now the target. While opposition is not something we tend to experience much in our part of the world, overseas and in other countries persecution of Christians is almost commonplace.
It’s interesting to think about how we often thank God for the freedom we have in our land to attend church, to read our Bibles, to come to youth group and Bible studies. When you look around the world, there are plenty of places around the world where Christians do not have this freedom. And in many of these places the church is growing. China is a great example of this. In places where there is no freedom—where opposition has actually made being a Christian a punishable offence—the church often grows and thrives. Beginning next week we’ll be talking about the persecuted church around the world in preparation for IDOP, but let me just say now that sometimes I wonder if the church in North America might not benefit from more open opposition.
You might say, though I don’t have any statistics to back me up, that God’s people are opposed and attacked in proportion to their faithfulness. God’s people will experience opposition in direct proportion to its faithfulness to God’s purposes. And the opposition is specific: it is directed at God through His people.
We should trust God to “cut the cords” of opposition
In this case the attacks of the enemy are described with a rather striking image in verse 3. Imagine someone lying on their belly while someone uses a plow driven by cattle over this person’s back, making deep, excruciating furrows in the person’s back—the attack is vicious and is intended to cause a lot of damage.
Yet our psalmist is confident and assured—this is not a psalm of despair. He says of his enemies in verse 2: “They have not prevailed against me.” Despite the attacks, he has not been overcome. Despite their attacks, his enemies have not managed to get a real foothold. They keep on trying, but no matter how hard they do “they have not prevailed.” Victory escapes the enemy. Zion is rescued.
We’re told in verse 4 that the “Lord is righteous; he has cut the cords of the wicked.” “Cutting the cords” refers to the harness cords that connected the plow to the oxen. To cut the cords makes the plow useless and unable to do its job. According to our psalm, God has cut these cords of the enemy, rendering his plows useless and ultimately harmless. While the attack continues—the enemy keeps on trying—the attacks have no effect. The enemy is impotent, powerless.
I want to think for a moment about the statement in verse 4: “The Lord is righteous.” This is the reason that the Lord has “cut the cords of the wicked.” The Lord has disarmed the enemy because He is righteous. The Lord has done this because of his righteousness and sovereignty; it has nothing at all to do with Zion except that Zion is God’s chosen instrument to demonstrate his sovereignty over and will for all the earth.
All I want to say about this is that the only opposition I’m talking about here is the sort we experience on account of our faith in Jesus Christ. Even as Christians we may feel like we’re experiencing opposition for all kinds of other reasons; but this is the reason the text has in mind: the enemy attacks to try and prevent the faithful of God from being faithful. And it is because of God’s own righteous character and His sovereign will that He will not allow opposition to prevail and overcome His people. Our response to knowing that God is sovereign is to trust him even while in the midst of facing opposition.
And this is our second point: We should trust God to cut the cords of the wicked. We cannot defeat our enemies. We cannot. We are not equipped to do so. Even the armour of God, as described by Paul in Ephesians, amounts to our placing our trust and faith in God, His word, and His gift of salvation. We arm ourselves with what He gives us: peace, faith, trust, etc. However much we defend ourselves, we cannot defeat our enemies; that’s already been done.
In Colossians 2 we are told that our enemies were defeated by Christ when he went to the cross; it is on the cross that the Lord has cut the cords of our enemies. This means that we can follow Jesus trusting that our enemies are powerless against us. Behind us and above is a sovereign God who has already defeated the enemy.
The Present Crisis
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and,
Behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His Own.
– James Russell Lowell
We should persevere in the face of opposition
Even though God has defeated the enemy, we are by no means completely passive in the face of opposition. Our third point is this: we should persevere in the face of opposition. The word perseverance comes from per meaning ‘through’ and severe. It means to keep pressing on and trusting God, looking up and doing our duty—even through severe circumstances. “When the high seas are raging, it’s no time to change ships.” – Leon Morris. This is also another way of thinking about the passage from Ephesians—the way we do battle is through perseverance, by defending ourselves with what as Christians have available to us.
But ultimately we have to realize that our perseverance is possible because of God’s faithfulness—we’ve all heard the phrase “stick-to-it-iveness.” When our psalm calls God righteous, this describes His relationship with us. He sticks with us. And He does because He is righteous and faithful to His own purposes for us. And because of this we can persevere. “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 is righteous. We can endure opposition because He has cut the cords of the wicked. Our trust in God’s sovereign will in the face of opposition and attacks should lead to our perseverance—as Paul says in Romans 5:3, 4, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”
We should pray for the ineffectiveness of opposition
Should we be as vindictive as the psalmist? It is alright to be angry at those who make our Christian walk more difficult? Certainly for those who are passionately following Jesus, it is not surprising that we get angry at those who make our journey harder. But should we, like the young Eugene Peterson, throw the bully to the ground and begin hitting him in the nose?
Notice how the psalmist is expressing his anger in a prayer—in verses 5 – 8 he directs his anger toward God. Maybe that’s how we should deal with our anger, too, by lifting it up and making it a question of God’s honour and righteousness.
But this brings to my fourth and last point: we should pray for the ineffectiveness of opposition. But then we say, hasn’t God already made our enemies ineffective and cut their cords? Why should we pray for the ineffectiveness of our enemies? John Calvin says that “nothing is promised to be expected from the Lord, which we are not also bidden to ask of him in prayers.” Calvin encourages us to “dig up by prayer” the very things God has promised: in this case, that He has cut the cords of the wicked.
I think prayer here is important because this all comes down to our relationship with God. This is a relational reality, and only prayer can give voice to that reality as we walk in the Christian way. This makes me wonder if after talking about the armour of God if Paul deliberately added, “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” He’s not beginning a new thought here—prayer is definitely a vital part of how we deal with the opposition we face as we follow Jesus. We pray that opposition will not finally thwart God’s will and purpose in our lives.
Conclusion
There’s a worship song that talks about this, and its lyrics really capture what I’ve been talking about:
The Battle Belongs to the Lord
In heavenly armour we’ll enter the land,
The battle belongs to the Lord.
No weapon that’s fashioned against us will stand.
The battle belongs to the Lord,
When the power of darkness comes in like a flood,
The battle belongs to the Lord
He’s raised up a standard, the power of His blood,
The battle belongs to the Lord.
When you enemy presses in hard, do not fear,
The battle belongs to the lord.
Take courage my friend, your redemption is near,
The battle belongs to the Lord.
We sing glory, honour
Power and strength to the Lord,
We sing glory, honour,
Power and strength to the Lord.
Whenever any of us faces anything that threatens to throw us off the road of faith and we wonder if we can continue, if the fight is worth it, let’s just remember that the Lord is our defender. Isaiah 19:20 the prophet remembers how God saved Israel from Egypt: “It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the Lord because of oppressors—note that Isaiah says “when they cry to the Lord” here—“he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them.” We needn’t be afraid or worried—God has already cut the cords of the wicked and they hold no real power against anyone who trusts in the righteousness of the Lord.
Since this is so, let us also suit up in the armour Paul describes for us so that we too, like Paul, can say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is a reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
