The Lord is righteous; he has cut the cords of the wicked. - Psalm 129:4
What a wonderful word from the Lord our brother from Malawi brought for us this past Sunday from Psalm 129. What particularly struck me was the centrality of v. 4. The righteousness of God is the key both to understanding the afflictions of the believer and the judgment on the enemies of God. If it were left to us, we would (and do) often misconstrue the sufferings we undergo in this life and interpret them as a sign of God’s disfavor or abandonment. And if judgment of those who oppress us and persecute us was left in our hands, who could be certain that they would administer such judgment in a just and holy manner?
Instead, we can persevere under afflictions and opposition because we know God is with and has promised to never leave us or forsake us. Eugene Peterson in his book on the Psalms of Ascents, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (which I highly recommend), reflects on this reality. He writes,
The cornerstone sentence of Psalm 129 is " (God wouldn’t put up with it, he sticks with us.” When the Bible says that God sticks with us, the emphasis is on his dependable personal relationship, that he is always there for us. The phrase does not mean that he corresponds to some abstract ideal of what is right; it speaks of a personal right relationship between Creator and creation. “Righteous” is a common translation for the Hebrew term. “Righteous is out and out a term denoting relationship, and…it does this in the sense of referring to a real relationship between two parties…and not to the relationship of an object under consideration to an idea.”
That “he sticks with us” is the reason Christians can look back over a long life crisscrossed with cruelties, unannounced tragedies, unexpected setbacks, sufferings, disappointments, depressions - look back across all that and see it as a road of blessing, and make a song out of what we see. “They’ve kicked me around ever since I was young, but they never kept me down.” God sticks to his relationship. He establishes a personal relationship with us and stays with it. The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us. 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, because God sticks with us. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God’s will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance. (pp.126-127)
The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God’s faithfulness. Saints, may that truth sustain you on your pilgrim’s journey even when the road is beset by afflictions and opposition.
