Who Owns You?

Psalm 129 and the Conflict Between the Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Serpent

Well, that hymn is very close to exactly what we're going to read in a moment, which is the text for the preaching this afternoon, which is Psalm 129. So if you turn there to Psalm 129, and once you have that, please stand for the reading of God's word.

Psalm 129, Greatly have they afflicted me for my youth. Let Israel now say, Greatly have they afflicted me for my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me. The plowers plowed upon my back, they made 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 the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up, with which the reaper does not feel his hand, nor the binder of sheaves 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. Now may God bless us as we hear his word proclaimed.

Please be seated.

Redemptive History in Psalm 129

You know, what I just read to you in just those eight verses in Psalm 129 is in some senses an encapsulation of the whole flow of redemptive history. In a sense, if you look back on Genesis chapter three, verse 15, when the Lord said that there will be enmity between the seed of the woman, which of course, finally flows into being Jesus Christ, and the seed of the serpent, people of the world, those who follow Satan, the accuser's ways.

And from that time forward, as God said there would be enmity, there was always this affliction being foisted upon those who were the seed of the woman, God's people, God's children, God's elect drawn out of the world, that people made his peculiar treasure, the apple of his eye, and the rest.

And so did not Cain afflict Abel. We can read in a little bit and say there must have been enmity there before he went and killed him, but there was this affliction from Cain and Abel. We can go through scripture and we can see that did not Esau afflict Jacob, Ishmael before him, Isaac, Joseph's brothers.

Against Joseph, that paradigm, that prefigurement of Jesus Christ, like almost no other, I would argue, in the Bible, afflicted by his brothers, the nation of Edom, which ultimately, as you trace it back, came from Israel's brothers, Edom, constantly afflicting Israel.

And the world constantly afflicting the church, greatly are they afflicting me from my youth. Let Israel now say, let Israel now agree, and church, as we go through this psalm, I want you to understand that we have encapsulated here this part of redemptive history, this constant friction, this hatred of the world against God and the people that he's drawn.

Out.

It's there in this psalm, it's there throughout redemptive history in the Bible. And as I go through this, as we hear this psalm proclaimed, I want you to identify with these people. Who are these people?

These are the ones, as we said, as we've been going through these songs of ascents, who've been released from captivity in Babylon. Remember, 70 years before, they had been taken captive by God's will and decree, from Jerusalem to Babylon, and now released from Babylon.

By God's will, Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, released them to go and build the temple. And this is that people coming back, and as they're coming back from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild a temple, to build a new temple, they're identifying all the way back with all the people of God that has resulted finally in them.

They say, greatly have they afflicted me in my youth. Did they mean just Egypt, perhaps? The first exodus, they being on this great second exodus, maybe that. But they've identified with this constant affliction, as we, church, must as well.

We look at Hebrews chapter 11, the great hall of faith, as we call it, and then chapter 12. There's an identification with them that we must have, that this is not just a history that is dry and in the history books for the scholastic types.

This is our history. This is people of God, this encapsulation of redemptive history. And what is it that the world has tried to do to this people, and tries to do to we as God's people? To put their name on you.

To identify you, or make you identify as one of theirs. Nothing the devil, our adversary, our enemy, hates more than for Jesus to plunder him, having bound the strong man, Matthew 12, 29, and plundered out of him, or away from him, you, or me, and all who believe.

And so causing his fury, and him wanting nothing more than to bring you back into his fold, the world, and his hatred of the church, and God, and Christ, and the message of the gospel, and all that that implies.

Doing what? Always trying to draw you back. Always trying to lure you back to the old ways, the memories of that old fleshly way.

Of living.

To bring you back to that. To put their name back on you. Well this is what the exiles went through while they were in Babylon. This is what they went through. What they remember in the first few verses of the psalm, especially verse 3, where it says that they plowed upon my back.

So this is your recap. This is your history. This is our never-ending struggle. As long as Jesus Christ tarries, this is where we want to be the living proof of the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to maintain his name.

To proclaim him. And to not give in to this world trying to draw us back. This never-ending struggle where they would have you bear their name. So they begin with a complaint. They begin with this memory of what they had gone through during their 70 years in Babylon.

Greatly have they afflicted me for my youth, says the worship leader. And then he calls out to the church. He calls out to Israel. He says, let all of us now agree. Let all of us now identify with those who for centuries before us were also afflicted in the same way we were.

This is our history. So he says, let Israel now say, let the church now say, greatly have they afflicted me for my youth. And greatly do they still afflict me. So Israel does comply in the second verse and repeats exactly what the worship leader.

Said.

Greatly have they afflicted me for my youth. But did you see what they added? You all heard it. Yet they have not prevailed against me.

Against me.

The affliction is against the church. The affliction is against God. And the affliction has a purpose to it. They will not prevail against God's people because that would mean they prevailed against.

God.

That would mean that God's arm was shortened, that God was weaker than they, and that is impossible. They have not prevailed against me. And the world will not prevail against you. We stay true to Christ as we maintain his name, as the scripture would have us to do.

Yet they have not prevailed against me. The world, in the end, if you are in Christ, cannot win. They will not prevail against you. As Jesus says, no one is able to snatch you out of the Father's hands because the Father is greater than all and I and the Father are one, he said.

The world cannot, in the end, win. They can make our time hard, they can make it full of sorrows, they can make it an affliction, but they will not win in the end. What is it they're trying to do? Well, they're trying to put their name on you.

We can think of the name, which is the number of men, that 666, which causes so much confusion and controversy in some circles. But simply to be identified with the world, to not identify with God, to bear another name than God's.

That's what it means. And this is what Babylon tried for 70 years to do with this people, just as the world today is doing with you and me and all who bear Christ's name. We get this from the third verse.

The Plowers, Babylon, and the World’s Attempt to Mark God’s People

The plowers plowed upon my back, they made long their furrows. The world, the devil, really does all they can. And so plowing upon the back of Israel. And consider how intense this picture is. Imagine yourself laid out, staked down on the ground.

You know, like in those old westerns, do you ever see those where the good guy gets staked on the ground in the desert and all he can do is wait for the sun to come up. He doesn't have any water, it's just going to toast him like a raisin.

You ever seen those kind of things? Imagine yourself staked down like that. And along comes the plower, plowing through the ground, making the furrows in the ground, and you're in the way, but intentionally there.

And what is he trying to do? Just cause you pain? Well, no, this word for plower is engraver. That's where it comes from in the Hebrew. It's engraver, like the artisans who engrave the names of Israel on those twelve precious stones that the high priest wears into the holy place when he bears Israel's name.

That engraver, that's the same word we have here for plower. So the engraver engraved upon my back would be one way to look at this. And this is where I get this idea that they're trying to put their name on you, engraving your name.

This word for engraving is usually used in a negative sense, in a sinful way. You have plowed iniquity, Hosea 10 .3, you've plowed, you've engraved iniquity, you've reaped injustice, you've eaten the fruit of lies, you've practiced it so long it's ingrained upon you, says Hosea to Israel.

And here is Babylon writing their name.

Who is Babylon?

If we can just take a moment and remember Babylon was founded by Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And he found this city, it's a city where the tower of Babel was built when man tried to reach up to God, make a name for themselves.

Babylon, which became an actual nation, this greedy and hasty and violent people. Babylon, who actually existed as a people, but Babylon, who throughout scripture was also the symbol of man's hatred of God.

Perhaps the epitome of Psalm 2, why do the nations rage? Babylon, raging against God, always trying to be higher or bigger or make a name for.

Themselves.

That's who was plowing, engraving on the back of the people, and this is the world's way.

With us.

Always trying to show you that you're wrong. Always trying to show you that Jesus Christ is just a myth. You know, they can handle if somebody becomes a Buddhist. They can handle if somebody becomes a Hindu, a Muslim, especially an atheist.

All these beliefs are okay, but where is the violent kind of talk against Christianity? Because we stand for God, we stand for morality, we stand for an ethic that is antithetical to Babylon. Because Babylon in the Bible represents all of that hatred of God, all of man's pride, all of man's avarice, all of man's greed, all of man's desire to be in charge of everything.

That's what Babylon is, engraving upon the back of Israel their name, and yet they have not prevailed against me, said Israel. How much more can we in Jesus Christ who bear his name, do you remember Revelation where Jesus says he will write a name upon a stone that only you and he will know you bear his name just as he bears your name before the Father?

The world cannot take that name away. We can forget it's there, and they will plow the furrow ever deeper and make it ever more painful upon you, yet they cannot prevail. The plowers plowed upon my back, they made long their furrows, doing all they could, and yet here's this faithful remnant who waited upon God, coming back and remembering this and saying, but they did not prevail against me.

Do you remember Polycarp, the early martyr in the church? Some church tradition, we can't really prove this, said he might have been that lad that Jesus put on his lap, said to come to the kingdom of God, you must become like this.

Child.

Well, Polycarp certainly was a disciple of the apostle John, and Polycarp when he was some 86 years old was made a martyr for Christ. And as he was being brought to the place of his martyrdom, I believe it was a coliseum there in Rome, the Roman guard came not just to pity him but to really love him.

And they told him, all you have to do is deny Christ. And his answer was, 80 and six years I have served him and he has done me no wrong. And he bore Jesus' name engraved upon his heart to the very end.

Whatever affliction the world puts upon us, his name is greater. And his name must be borne by us into whatever affliction is given to us. Polycarp was a real man who really went to the flames, who really refused to deny Christ even to save himself from such a death.

So it means to bear his name. And all the affliction that the world puts upon you, all the trouble they give you, all the mockery that you have to endure, none of that, if you're truly in Christ, can take away his name.

It will not prevail against you. Remember it was the Lord who punished Judah with the 70 years of exile. Remember that it was these survivors, they're the ones who believed God's word through Jeremiah and surrendered to their conquerors.

So how then could they even accuse him of wrong? Well, they wouldn't.

This is the faithful room.

This is like that picture of the church in this early way. So how can they accuse Babylon of wrong when it was Babylon who was sent by God? It was these people who believed Jeremiah said, you must surrender to Babylon.

And now they say Babylon did wrong is because Babylon went too far. Because Babylon thought the victory was all they're doing. They lost sight of whose people these really were. They were God's people.

It was God who gave Babylon the victory. Now they had God's people and they treated them as if they were their own. This is God's people. We're going to plow upon the back. We're going to engrave our name, the world's name upon them.

And ultimately failed. And did wrong. And we can read this in many places in the prophets and some of the Psalms, by going too far, by not just conquering and taking exile, which is what God ordained.

But the violence went on and on. We can read about that later in the scripture sometime. Well, verse four is our great hope. Verse four is our great hope. Why did they not prevail against Israel? Why can the world not prevail against you?

Why can no one snatch you out of Jesus's hand? Well, because God is greater than all. No one can snatch you out of his hands because Jesus said so. Verse four says, the Lord is righteous. He has cut the cords of the wicked.

He has given freedom to his people. When he moved Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, in his first year to say, go back to Jerusalem, the Lord has told me, send this people back, finance the whole thing, send them back to build me the temple again.

He cut the cords of the wicked of Babylon, not that Persia turned out to be any more righteous than Babylon, but that's another story. Their freedom was a work of the Lord. God cut the cords. He cut the cords.

They passively had to wait for this to happen. They had no ability. They had no power to affect their own release. And we think ourselves, what does it say in Ephesians chapter two from the apostle Paul?

And you who are dead in your trespasses and sins in which you used to walk, you cut the cords that held you down. You raised yourself up from the grave and came, of course not. God cut the cords of the wicked.

God raised you up. Ephesians two says that we have been resurrected with Christ. Well, not yet quite at this moment, but so certain that Paul can put it in the firm form of the verb that means it's already happened.

So sure is it. I didn't say we cut our cords and got ourselves free. God cut the cords of the wicked Babylon and sent them back to Jerusalem. Just as God gave you faith to believe, that faith being that great cord cutter that set you free from the law of sin and death, that set you free from the worldly ways, that set you free to serve your creator, God, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, is the Lord who is righteous.

It's the Lord is the reason they didn't prevail against them. It's the Lord who keeps us true to Christ. Oh, we are to be disciplined. We are to do our part. We are to mortify our sin. We are to believe in Jesus Christ and read the scripture and pray with the saints and be in communion together as we worship God.

All those things.

Yes.

But it's the Lord who does these things through us and makes us able, makes us even want to. It's the Lord who cut the cords of the wicked. It's the Lord who cut the cords that held you down into this world and brought you to himself by giving you faith to believe in Jesus Christ.

Shame, Reversal, and the Fate of Babylon

So what's their response to their persecutors? May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turn backward. It's going to go on, but we could stop there for a moment. What does it mean to be shamed? It means to fall into disgrace.

It means to have a set of circumstances come upon you that prove that everything you believed in was nonsense. It was a mist. It was a vapor. It was a dream to think that you're more powerful than God, to think that you could put your name on God's people and that your name would prevail against God's name upon.

That people.

Think again of the high priest with those 12 precious stones on his breastplate and each stone having engraved upon it, if you will, plowed into it a name of one of the tribes and he bears them into the holy places.

He atones for the sins of the people. Those who he bears in, those who Jesus brings to the throne of grace, those who Jesus suffered for, those who Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3, God before the foundation of the world placed in Jesus Christ, will never be ashamed.

Doesn't Paul say in Romans 2 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. What does it mean to not be ashamed?

It means that I believe in something that is going to do what is promised to do. The gospel will really, literally, truly save you now and the gospel, the power of God will literally and truly save you in the resurrection when Jesus returns and will be resurrected and we shall see him as he is because we shall be like him.

May all who hate Zion be put to shame. Those who hate the church, those who hate Jesus Christ, those who cannot stand the God who sent Jesus Christ to die for their sins. May those people be put to shame.

May God prove even now before Christ returns and there's no alternative, be shown to their shame that everything they believe in is nonsense, that it must be God who they put their faith in and hope and trust.

As long as they hate Zion, as long as they hate the church, as long as their hope is in something other than God, may they be put to shame. May they be shown that it's not going to work or it didn't work or it will never work.

They will never prevail against God. They've fallen to scrape. They're way shown to be foolish. They will not produce what they had hoped for. Turned backwards. Now this is not the word that is often used for repentance.

This is just turned backwards to be shown that it is the wrong way they've been going. Usually this word is used in hostile contexts. In other words, stop trying to do harm to God's people. God has prevailed against you and here we go home.

May they be turned backwards. When the Jews are singing this on the way to Jerusalem, keep in mind that it was their conqueror, Babylon, who'd just gotten conquered by the ones who released them, Persia.

That's all the history we're going to do. We're not going to get real detailed about this. But Babylon, who tried to engrave their name upon this people, was no more. They'd been turned backwards and the Jews had been turned forward.

The Jews were returning to Jerusalem and where's Babylon? They don't exist anymore. And sort of if they dare raise their head and see where they are, well Cyrus, king of Persia, is not going to take very kindly to that.

They are no more. They're gone. They've been turned backwards. Revelation chapter 18 is Babylon. Remember Babylon, that paradigm, that metaphor for all of human pride and greed and avarice, all for all of God's, all of man's resistance to God.

Revelation 18, they're burned in the fire. They're done for. And where are God's people at that time? With Christ, who's been turned backwards. Worldly ways. Who's been turned back to our true home. As the Jews here, we're returning to Jerusalem, so we will be with Christ at that time.

It's them, the world, who's turned backwards. The shame that they imposed upon Jerusalem, laying them down in this humiliating way and engraving their name upon their back and digging their furrows long and deep and often and hard and painfully.

That shame that they tried to impose will rebound upon them. It did rebound upon them. Let them be like the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up, with which the reaper does not feel his hand or the binder of sheaves his arms.

That is, let them be unproductive. Let them be like nothing. As their ways are shown to be useless and has been shown to be nonsense, also let them be unproductive. Let them not be able to accomplish what they had hoped to accomplish with their ungodly ways before.

Be unproductive rather than oppressing and abusing. Babylon ought to have humbly credited God with their victory, but they didn't. And so now as these people are returning to Jerusalem and these people have been freed and been shown that their ways were not shameful because God accomplished what he said he would accomplish in and through and for them, nor those who pass by say the blessing of the Lord be upon you.

We bless you in the name of the Lord. Well, I think the meaning of this is pretty clear, but one thing we need to understand from this is we don't give false assurances. We don't go blessing people in the name of the Lord who are from Babylon, those who stand.

Against God.

And we want to be kind with them, don't we? We want to have this missional kind of an attitude towards things as we were taught this morning even. But we need to be careful that we don't go giving a false assurance, that we don't go being soft-hearted about this and looking at those who stand against God and shake their fist at him and refuse him and ultimately really hate him and perhaps some kind of blessing upon them and act as though it's okay.

And we just get along so long as we have peace together or something like that.

No, no, no.

Nor do those who pass by say the blessing of the Lord be upon you. We bless you in the name of the Lord. No, we don't bless you in the name of the Lord. You stood against the Lord and now you're paying the price for it.

You, Babylon, who tried to put your name on us, God's people, and now you are no more. Now you don't exist. We don't bless you in the name of the Lord. We don't see God's blessing upon you. Well, this is the song.

And this is that encapsulation of the entire flow of redemptive history and the conflict that we're in all the time. The world, if you believe in Christ, do you believe in Christ Jesus? Have you repented of your sin and in faith trusted him for your salvation?

Guess what? The world wants you back. The world wants you back. And as it always has, it's going to afflict you as Esau afflicted Jacob, as Joseph's brothers afflicted him, as Ishmael afflicted Isaac, as Joseph's brothers.

I think I just said that. It goes on and on and on. The final victory is whose? Because they said they have not prevailed against us. The world will never prevail against you. And not because you or I are stronger than they.

But because Jesus is stronger than all, because his father is greater than all. Second Corinthians chapter four, verse eight says 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 Jesus. Can I stop and say always carrying in ourselves the name of Jesus Christ engraved upon us? Always carrying in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in our bodies.

For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus's sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our immortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. Lesson to us is to remember that the church or the world is always going to try to draw you back, always trying to denigrate your faith, always trying to put their name upon.

You.

But know this, Paul was afflicted the same way, for the same reason, because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Jews were afflicted because they were God's people, as we today are afflicted because we belong to Christ.

They cannot prevail against you. So we stay true to our faith as we hold to the faith that God gave us, and believe in him, and live for him, and live the way he tells us to live. And do those things that the Bible would command us to do, those things that bring honor to his name.

As we bear his name, the world cannot prevail against us, because Jesus Christ, as he said, his father is greater than all. And Jesus, as it says in the second Corinthians we just read, and many other places we can go to, the victory is his.

They will not prevail against you. They will try, but they cannot prevail, because it's Christ whose blood bought you.

Amen.

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Assurance in Christ

Heavenly Father, I do thank you for the assurances that we have that Jesus Christ is greater than all, and that it is in him and through him, because of him, that we can come to you, Father, standing at the very throne of grace.

So, Father, may we bear your name well, and we thank you that the world cannot have its way with us, because you, Father, have had your way with us by giving us your son, that we belong to you because of him and the faith you've given us.

And we thank you for all this, in Jesus' name.

Amen.