Psalms 119:65-72 | Your Strength Shall Be

Good morning, First Baptist Church of Artisia. I'm Ben. I'm a member here. It's my joy and privilege to bring you the Word of God this morning. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to Psalm 119, verses 65 to 72. This is where we'll be reading. And as you turn there, if you don't have a copy of God's Word, there are Bibles right in front of you for you to grab. This is a gift from our church to you. If you don't have a copy at home, please take it, and it's our joy to give that as a present. As you're turning to Psalm 119, I know the privilege we had together this morning is just singing the songs that we just sang. "Your cross, O Lord, taught me to sing. For now, my captive soul is free. No guilt, no fear, no suffering, can tear away your love from me. No song can reach such heights of joy, no time can tell such depths of peace, no power, no time can e'er destroy. Th' eternal praise for Calvary." It's our joy to sing songs like these together and to hear the saints sing. And so we turn then our attention to another song that we find in Scripture.

God Afflicts Us For Our Good

Psalm 119, 65 to 72, hear the Word of the Lord through the psalmist:

Lord, you have treated your servant well, just as you promised. Teach me good judgment and discernment, for I rely on your commands. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good, and you do what is good; teach me your statutes. The arrogant have smeared me with lies, but I obey your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are hard and insensitive, but I delight in your instruction. It was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn your statutes. Instruction from your lips is better for me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. — Psalm 119:65-72 (CSB)

Pray with me. Father, help us learn what you have for us in your Word. Help us trust that you are good and you do good. Would these words be a comfort to our heart today? We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

As we gather this morning, we can think of even just a song that I've just recounted for us, that we have songs for every occasion. We have happy songs, we have sad songs, we have a song that we sing for every birthday that passes, celebrating another year in someone's life. When I was in high school, I had a playlist that had two songs. It was private. I don't want to name the names of those songs because it's too embarrassing. It was a playlist about heartbreak; there were only two songs in there. You could take your pick of whichever songs you'll fill in in that playlist.

But when I'm talking about songs, there are also those songs that we hear when the melodies would play, when we hear "Jesus Loves Me" from a young age and then we hear that when we're older. Sometimes those melodies and those tunes, we remember them a little differently. We remember them a bit more fondly. Even just the songs we've sung this morning. My title this morning for this sermon is "As Your Days, Your Strength Shall Be." For some of you, you might already know where we're headed just from that title alone.

And yet I bring up this idea of song because we have a songbook in the Bible, and that is the Psalms themselves that capture the breadth of human emotion. What I want to challenge this morning with the particular text that we have before us is that this is the truth that God wants us to know by His Word in Psalm 119:65-72: that God afflicts us for our good.

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. What you'll see when you look at it is that primarily it's about the blessed man and God's Word. If you read through the different stanzas, it's the man of God describing the goodness of God and, at the same time, the goodness of His Word. Notice in your Bibles that there are these headings between each set of eight verses. It begins with "Aleph" and then "Bet" and then "Gimel" and "Dalet." Those are simply indications that each of these stanzas begins with a letter from the Hebrew alphabet. It's going from the A to Z of the Hebrew alphabet. There are 22 stanzas, and the beginning of each verse is the beginning of each Hebrew word [within that stanza].

Something that will help us understand what that means is, take for example, Valentine's is coming up next Friday. If you're a husband or if you're a wife and you don't have ideas yet of what to do, if you were to write a letter to your spouse and you tried to describe them from A to Z. So, for example, my wife is "A, artistic and amazing; B, beautiful and brave; C, caring and kind." Now, "kind" is with a 'K,' but I just wanted to fit that in there because my wife is Swedish and she's the kind of person I know. But that should give you a bit of a picture of what the Psalmist is trying to accomplish in Psalm 119. He's trying to say that this is the A to Z of who God is and what God's Word is. This is his joy and delight to put in the effort that in each and every word that he chooses, he means to say something about God. And the question that we have this morning as we come to this text is this: How can we know that God afflicts us for our good? How can we know that God afflicts us for our good? We'll deal with it in three points.

First, the Lord has treated us well in Psalm 119:65-67. Second, the Lord is good and He does good in 68-70. And lastly, the Lord's instruction is better in verses 71-72. These are three truths that will anchor our souls as we face affliction. And I pray in hope that we would understand that when we say that God afflicts us for our good, we would remember these truths: that He has treated us well, that He is good and He does good, that the Lord's instruction is better.

The Lord Has Treated Us Well

As we turn to our first point, the Lord has treated us well. The Psalmist describes his relationship with the Lord in verse 65. He says that the Lord has dealt with him, has treated him well as his servant. What we come to find out is that not only does the Psalmist understand and recognize that he is someone who is under the Word of God, but he thinks fondly of the Word of God and not only of the Word of God, but of the Lord Himself. He says that his relationship between them is that the Lord has treated his servant well, according, just as you promised. And what has the Lord promised to the Psalmist as we come to this text? He's promised exactly that, which is according to His Word. Throughout Psalm 119, this particular word, the language of the Lord's promise, we actually find that it's related to salvation and the Lord's faithful love that He expresses throughout.

And so when we think of the Lord's promise and when we think of what the Psalmist is saying, that he's been treated well, that the Lord has treated his servant well, it's in relation to this fact that the Lord has given salvation, that He has dealt kindly, that He has poured out His loving kindness towards the one who writes these very words, that this is God's faithful love that He has expressed to the Psalmist, that He loves him, that He cares for him, cares for him enough that He would give him salvation. This is the bounds by which the Psalmist says, "You have treated me well," and that's important for us to know at the outset. As we read the other verses of this passage, remember that God has treated you well, and that's according to His promise, and let that be the foundation by which we understand all else that follows from this passage.

In verse 66 then, as we consider the goodness of God, the Psalmist recalls to us that he relies on God to teach him good judgment and discernment. For what reason? Because he relies on His commands. The Psalmist relies on God's commands. Why would the Psalmist, after having already affirmed that God treats him well, so quickly turn and ask, "Teach me good judgment, teach me good discernment?" The Psalmist relies on the Lord for good judgment and discernment because all that is in him, the natural man, would want to look at the Lord's affliction and say that it was not good that he was brought low. Why would we ask the Lord to help us to understand our present circumstance? For what reason would the Psalmist say that he needs to be taught good judgment and good discernment after having just said that the Lord has treated him well? Because it's so often the case for us that as we look up and look around, we're unable to put together what God has done in the past, what God is presently doing in life, and what God will do in the future. It's hard for us to put together the hard things of life in a way that makes sense. If God doesn't teach us good judgment and discernment, we'll only see the bitter providences of life, ever as bitter. And so the Psalmist asks that he relies on the Lord's commands: "Teach me good judgment and discernment, that I might understand my present lot in life."

And so we continue in verse 67, and this is the first verse of this set where we see the word "affliction": "Before I was afflicted, I went astray." In verse 65 the Psalmist began with the result that "You have treated your servant well," yet now he turns to the past context that led him to say those words. For what reason did the Psalmist say that "You have treated me well?" Well, in verse 67, what we see is that the Psalmist is talking about a time before, before affliction ever came. He was already straying. Before affliction ever entered into his life, he was already apart from the Lord, away from the Lord. And yet what he says about that time is that before the Psalmist suffered affliction, he was already straying and he wanted nothing to do with God, that his life was characterized by being away from Him.

Sometimes people keep their distance away from God because they're afraid that if they're to know God and know what it is to be a Christian, there are too many things they'd have to give up; that what it means to be a Christian is to have to obey too many rules, to limit all of our experiences; that to be a Christian is to put ourselves under some subservient relationship where there is no joy, where there's no delight, where we never get to do the things that we want; that to be a Christian means to follow rules and to forego the things that we might want to do. And yet when suffering comes, the finger is always pointed at God. When affliction comes, the finger is always pointed at God. And yet the Psalmist is saying that before affliction ever came, he was already apart from the Lord. He had already been living life in a way that was far from God, wanting nothing to do with God. When the Psalmist lived free from the Creator, the description he gave to his own life is this: "I went astray."

The life of the Psalmist, even before affliction came, before suffering ever came, he described it as going astray. So how then should we think about the goodness of God in affliction? Because the Psalmist is trying to tell us something specific here about suffering: that when affliction came, it actually turned him to God, that when suffering came, it actually pushed him to the One who knows all things.

Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you. Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed. If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. — 1 Peter 4:12-14 (CSB)

So this first point, what we see is that God has dealt with His servant well, because even before affliction came, he recognized that he was away. And yet the turn of verse 67 is that, "but now I keep your word." To the one who has been treated well by the Lord, who has been taught good judgment and discernment, the one who relies on His commands, who was at one time straying, and yet when affliction came, by the reality of the truths of God's Word, he's able to say, "but now I keep your word." The Psalmist is trying to remember, trying to recognize, and bringing to the front of his mind, that the Word is sufficient for his life, that the Word of God is sufficient for affliction.

The Lord Is Good and He Does Good

And so the following verses read: "You are good and you do what is good; teach me your statutes. The arrogant have smeared me with lies, but I obey your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are hard and insensitive." The Lord used affliction to break the pattern of the Psalmist's wanderings. Sickness, disease, poverty, disappointments, disgraces, and shame. Though we forget at times that it's through many hardships that we enter the kingdom of God, when we think of affliction, we don't think of it kindly. And we must never relate that if we suffer, that the suffering is the point of suffering. God means for something to happen when He afflicts us. And so we turn then to the second point: that the Lord is good and He does good, verses 68 to 70.

Remember the context that we're in, Psalm 119. The Psalmist is trying to exhaustively describe who God is, and how does he describe Him in verse 68? "You are good and you do what is good." It's one thing if the Psalmist were to just say, "God is good." It's another thing if he only said that "God does what is good." But he takes care to mention that God is good and, "God, you are good." And if you notice that in this particular section, "good" is the word that keeps coming up. It's the word that keeps getting repeated because the Hebrew word for good and goodness begins with this letter. And so in the mind of the Psalmist, he's thinking of the goodness of God, and when he's thinking of the goodness of God, he writes concerning affliction.

Here is God's goodness and here is affliction. How do we put these two things together when we live life and experience its hardships? When the Psalmist uses "good," he means to describe all of those things which point to God's goodness. That in a chapter where he's trying to exhaustively describe who God is, he points to the infinity of God's goodness and uses it as a base against the afflictions that we experience in life. Where there is a gap in the mind of the Psalmist between affliction and God's ways, God's goodness bridges the gap between that which we do not know in the life that we've experienced, but at the same time, when we look behind us, and see how God was certainly orchestrating all things for our good. And after describing God, settling on that foundation, the Psalmist says, "Teach me your statutes." In the midst of affliction, "teach me your statutes."

That the posture of the Psalmist's heart is to live in the tension and reconcile these two hard things. God is good, suffering is real, affliction has come, and yet God remains the foundation by which I live my life. The proclamation of God's goodness in this passage is surrounded by the reality that before affliction came, he had gone astray, and shortly we'll see after this that there were those who came against him, and yet the Psalmist resolves that God is good and He does good. God is good and He does good in the midst of affliction.

And so the example that he gives in verses 69 to 70: "The arrogant have smeared me with lies, but I obey your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are hard and insensitive." What's being described is a heart that's unable to respond to anything at all. It's similar to a dead conscience. Where the heart of the Psalmist is inclined to do God's will and obey His precepts, the heart of the arrogant is insensitive to the holy. His heart both rejects God and is numb to the dangers of sin. The heart of the arrogant wants nothing to do with the Almighty.

And it's often the case that when hardship comes, we take inventory of what we might have done to deserve hardship. When hardship comes, we think, "Is there something that I did for God to do this to me?" And so we pity ourselves at such a bitter providence and we question, "God, you could have prevented this. You could have done something so that this isn't happening in my life." And yet the arrogant are the ones who look at God's Word and look at His people, point the finger, and say, "Look at you, Christian, who suffer."

You might be here today and you don't trust Christ, that your heart is hard and insensitive to the things of God. You look at affliction around the world, maybe even in this room, and scoff, because how could a good God allow His own to suffer? That is a hard question we ask. Some may be more than others when it comes to day-to-day realities. And before we come to an answer to that question, this is how the Psalmist responds: "but I obey your precepts with all my heart," verse 70, "but I delight in your instruction." When affliction came from others around him, the Psalmist did not see it as an opportunity to call down judgment on his enemies, but his response is measured: there's a recognition in the mind of the Psalmist that God has brought affliction. The ones afflicting him desire to afflict him, that the affliction was allowed by God so that the Psalmist could learn God's statutes through what? Through obedience and joy. The Psalmist would learn God's statutes through obedience and joy.

Charles Bridges says this concerning this verse, "O Lord, let not my heart be unvisited for one day, one hour, by that melting energy of love which first made me feel and constrained me to love." The Psalmist isn't saying that it doesn't matter that he's being persecuted. The Psalmist isn't saying that you shouldn't think anything of those things, but what he is saying is that the love of God is so comprehensive and full that it's sufficient for him to see his affliction in light of the glory and the goodness and the majesty of God, that his response to it is delight in obedience, that it is better to obey, that it is better to delight because God is a good God and He does good and He has dealt well with us.

To the hard and insensitive of heart, it might be difficult to understand why a Christian would contend daily to trust in the God who has saved him, though life may be hard. And yet to that we respond and simply look and be reminded that He who came, Jesus in the flesh, suffered for us, died for our sins, bore the penalty of death, and that for anyone who would believe in Him has eternal life. Sometimes the answer that we're looking for will not necessarily be in the way that we want it, and yet often Scripture's answer to our hardest questions when it pertains to life's sufferings is this: Look to God who is good; surely He means for your good.

The Lord's Instruction Is Better

And so this brings us to the third point: we trust that the Lord has treated us well, we trust that God is good and that He does good. God afflicts for our good, and so this third point helps anchor us and it says, "The Lord's instruction is better." This is what Psalm 119 reads: "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn your statutes. Instruction from your lips is better for me than thousands of gold and silver pieces."

The Psalmist's learning about God's statutes, His wisdom, His words, was brought about through affliction. He's not saying that affliction itself was good, but that the situation that brought about affliction allowed him to learn the Lord's statutes, and for that he can call the situation good. It was not that he was experiencing physical pain, emotional turmoil, or all other things that we could describe as suffering. Those things in and of themselves were not necessarily good, and yet the situation that brought about growth in the Psalmist by way of knowing God more and knowing Him better makes the situation in one sense good. As Christians, we don't say that bad equals good. We don't say that bad things are good things and good things are bad things. Christians of all people should be able to say that something bad that has happened in someone's life was actually bad, was actually evil, was actually sinful, and yet the Christian in the same breath is able to say, "and yet God means something good." We live in that tension and we hold it because Scripture holds it. We hold it between the reality, in the arms of a loving God. We hold the tension of the hard things of life and the faithfulness of a good God.

Spurgeon writes, "To be 'larded' by prosperity is not good for the proud, but for the truth to be learned by adversity is good for the humble. Very little is to be learned without affliction. If we would be scholars, we must be sufferers. There is no royal road to learning the royal statutes. God's commands are best read by eyes wet with tears."

I'm sure a lot of us—most of us, all of us—would desire that when we would ask God to give us grace, to grow us in mercy, that He wouldn't do it through hard things. We'd rather prefer Him to grow us in grace, love, and mercy by not causing us to love those who are hard to love, those who are hard to care for, those who are hard to be merciful towards. And yet so often is the case that the Lord grows His saints through these hard things and the need to rely on Him.

Here's Scripture's tenor when it comes to trials:

Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. — James 1:2-4 (CSB)

And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. — Romans 5:3-5 (CSB)

You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. — 1 Peter 1:6-7 (CSB)

“You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. — Matthew 5:11-12 (CSB)

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. — 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (CSB)

And the question is, Christian, what if that's too hard? What if it's too hard to be afflicted and to trust in God and in His goodness? What if the trials of this life weigh us down so much that we're unable to pull ourselves out from the mire? And yet it's to you, Christian, if you feel affliction has made it impossible, that you say, "I can't do it on my own," then you are in good company. Don't despair that we have the same starting point, that when the Psalmist says, "before I went astray," that's a description of us all. The life that the Psalmist had before he turned to God in His Word. If we were weighed solely on our own performance when affliction came, there would be no hope. But there was One, One who suffered affliction and not because He was straying.

Jesus, having fasted for 40 days and nights, confronted by Satan to turn stones into bread that He might eat. Jesus responded with the Word of God, "Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). As Jesus hung on the cross, on His heart was Scripture, saying, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Psalm 22:1). Even in affliction, Jesus remembered the words of the Lord. On the road to Emmaus after having resurrected, Jesus taught His disciples from Scripture that all of these things point to Me, they terminate in Me, that I am the fulfillment of these very things that Scripture has spoken of.

During his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was the Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered. After he was perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, and he was declared by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. — Hebrews 5:7-10 (CSB)

Jesus, who did not stray, not once in His earthly life, through obedience, though He suffered, purchased salvation, complete and eternal and full. And He calls to us that we repent and believe in that very Savior. When the Psalmist says, "it was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn your statutes," it's because he believes that God's statutes are more valuable than all other things in this life. So then, verse 72: "Instruction from your lips is better for me than thousands of gold and silver pieces." How do the saints communicate to the world that God's Word is better than riches untold in this earthly life?

To the Christian who is in affliction, when we feel our bodies failing us, it points us to His promise that we will be made new, that our afflictions can lead us to a place where we actually hope in the promises of God in ways that we wouldn't have otherwise. That in the midst of weakness, God is displayed. When a saint loses a loved one and through tears sings, "When through the deep waters I call you to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow, for I will be with you, your troubles to bless, and sanctify to you, your deepest distress."

When a cloudy providence strips a Christian of what normal is like, and yet they persist in reading God's Word, praying, and gathering with the saints, because God has promised that they will find their solace there. When an older Christian makes the effort to go to church on Sunday to hear from the Lord and to sit under the Word, knowing that there are many things that they have to prepare for beforehand, are those not evidences of saints in affliction, trusting that instruction from God's lips is better for them than thousands of gold and silver pieces?

First Baptist Church of Artisia, are we lacking for examples of saints in affliction who trust in the Lord? We don't. We're surrounded by saints who are afflicted in every which way, and yet their joy is to trust in the Lord. The goodness of God that it is our joy is the body of Christ here, evidence of how God has sustained and has been sustaining and continues to sustain His saints in this life. Beloved, the Lord has given you days and He will sustain you for the days here, and yet He will certainly sustain you for the days even in glory.

Bridges again confronts us with a hard question: "This is true. This is a correct estimate of the worth of God's law better than the world's treasures, but is it better to me?" Have I decided that God's Word is actually more valuable than the treasures of this life? And what is it that we find in God's Word? That which the world could never have given me, that of which the world could never deprive me. That is the Word of God to us. How can we know that God afflicts us for our good? Because He has treated us well, because He is good and does good, and His instruction is better. Many saints here are testimonies of this exact song, lives marked by the fight to trust God in His Word despite and in the midst of affliction.

Has God afflicted? He has. How has He treated us? He's treated us well beyond what we're deserving of, so we believe Him. Has God afflicted? He has. Is He evil and does He do evil? No, He doesn't. He does good and is good, and so we trust Him. Has God afflicted? He has, for what reason? That we would learn His instruction, for it is better than all else, so follow Him. He will not lead you astray. Where God has called us to suffer affliction, pain, loss, distress, or poverty, His promise is that for all our days, in this life and in the next, so our strength shall be. Saints, trust in the Christ who came to save you. Trust in the God who is good, who is enthroned in heaven, and yet sent His Son to be with you, and the very Spirit now that indwells you will sustain you in the midst of affliction. Trust that even in the hard things of life, we have a God who knows all of our needs, knows all of our pains and knows all of our worries, and to all of those things He promises to us His Son. He promises His life. That His goodness is sufficient for all of our affliction.

Pray with me. Father, we thank you that you are a God that we can trust, in all of life's difficulties, even in the moments where it's hard to know what to do next. May we be like the Psalmist, and in each and every moment say, "Teach us your instruction, teach us your commands, help us learn good discernment and judgment, that we might see our lives in light of your goodness." We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.