Affliction Our Teacher


Sermon by David Strain on October 15, 2023 Psalms 119:65-72

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Do please take a Bible in hand and turn with me to Psalm 119; page 513 if you’re using a church, Bible. We come in our ongoing study of Psalm 119 to the ninth of its twenty-two stanzas in which the Hebrew word for “good” appears six times over. It’s the very first word of five of the verses in Hebrew, and it appears twice over in verse 68. So verse 65, “God has dealt well with his servant,” literally, “God’s dealings have been good.” In verse 66, the psalmist prays for “good judgment and knowledge.” Verse 68, “God is good and does good.” Verse 71, it has been “good” that he has been afflicted. And verse 72, the law of God’s mouth is better, literally, “more good than gold or silver.” So do you see the point in this stanza of the psalm? The ways of God are good according to the Word of God that is good, all because God Himself is always and in every circumstance perfectly good.

It’s the central claim of this stanza, but knowing in our heads that God is good, well that’s one thing; learning to live in light of it in our experience day by day, that can be another thing entirely. Isn’t that so? Knowing that God is good here, and feeling and living from the truth that God is good, that’s another thing entirely. And the great contribution of this stanza is to show us how the good God teaches us that He is good and does good all the time. And what’s especially striking here, is the particular instrument that God uses, the special teacher that God sends to instruct us. In this stanza, God’s teacher is affliction. So the psalmist says in verse 67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” Or in verse 71, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” Affliction itself is not good, but the good God wields affliction to teach us that He is good and to work everlasting good into us. Affliction is God’s tutor, sent into the lives of every one of His children to teach them to walk in His good ways.

If you’ll look at the portion of the psalm with me for a moment, you’ll notice the stanza falls into two divisions. In the first, verses 65 to 68, the psalmist is praying, isn’t he. Do you see that? He is specifically asking to be taught. “Teach me good judgment,” verse 66. “Teach me your statutes,” verse 68. And then in the second part of the stanza, in 69 through 72, the psalmist resolves to act. He’s meditating on his past and his present commitments and he is renewing his determination to live God’s way. So here is the outline in light of that division. First of all, we must learn to pray – sorry – we must pray to learn in affliction’s school. We must pray to learn in affliction’s school. And secondly, we must practice the lessons affliction teaches. Pray to learn in affliction’s school. Practice the lessons affliction teaches. Before we unpack those headings, let’s bow our heads and pray and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us all pray.

O Lord our God, grant us grace under the tutelage of Your Word, rightly to interpret the lessons that affliction teaches in our own lives, that by Your Word’s work within us, we might be drawn to Christ and rest on Him. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.

The one hundred and nineteenth psalm, beginning at verse 65. This is the Word of God:

“You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word. Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts; their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.”

Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.

Pray to Learn in Affliction’s School

So we are taught here first of all to pray to learn in affliction’s school. Pray to learn in affliction’s school. The psalmist has recently endured suffering, hasn’t he. Verse 67, “I was afflicted.” Some translate that phrase, “I was brought low.” One scholar has it, “I became weak.” The point is, the psalmist has recently endured a painful experience of some unnamed affliction. He has become weak. He has been brought low. He is suffering. And it happened, he tells us, while he was wandering away, like a stray sheep wandering from the fold, lost and exposed to all kinds of dangers. He had turned from the path of faithfulness and obedience to the Lord and then in the midst of his backsliding, he was afflicted. And those afflictions brought him back to the flock, back to repentance. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.”

He makes the same point, as we saw a moment ago, in verse 71. Look there. Verse 71, “It was good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes.” The form of the Hebrew verb there in verse 71, “I was afflicted,” indicates that he was acted upon by another. Which could mean that he was afflicted by the opponents, the hostile wicked who surround him. He calls them here, “the insolent.” That’s certainly been an important theme that we have noticed as we’ve worked through the psalm so far, over and over again, hasn’t it. But whatever the proximate cause of his suffering, I think we have to conclude in context that the final agent of his affliction here is really God Himself. God, in His providence, has afflicted him. God has permitted affliction to break into his life, to be a schoolmaster to him, to instruct him and teach him and bring him back to obedience. He learned God’s statutes, he says, not just intellectually, not just the knowledge of them in his mind, he learned them in his heart and in practice in his experience under the painful tutelage of affliction.

And many of you here know exactly what the psalmist is talking about, don’t you. This has been your story just like it was his. And you know this is God’s ordinary method as He works to grow His people, isn’t it? That’s why James 1 at verse 2 we are told to, “count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet 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.” What is God doing in your afflictions, in the trials of your faith, in the testing of it? He is working steadfastness in you, maturity into you, that you may be complete, lacking in nothing. Pay attention to that word “produces.” “The testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Or you hear the same note sounding again in Romans 5:3. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces” – what does it produce? “Endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” There it is again. Suffering produces. The testing of our faith produces. It is designed and intended by God. It is deployed by Him with a purpose – to be productive of likeness to Jesus Christ in your life.

I read an article this last week about rhubarb. It’s amazing where a pastor will go in search of an illustration! So I read an article about rhubarb. You can’t really grow rhubarb here in Mississippi, but I grew up – it needs cooler climates – but I grew up with it in my garden in Glasgow as a child and we ate it all the time as a family. This article is about how they grow rhubarb in Yorkshire, England, and they have a fascinating special technique. You see, for the first few years, the rhubarb grows outside, under the sun, as normal. But then when the plants are ready, they are relocated to a completely lifeless growing shed. And in this dark, heated environment, the plants are compelled to grow very rapidly. They shoot up, actually growing more than an inch a day, as they reach for the sky; they are looking for the light. According to the article, “This sped up maturation results in cells dividing so fast you can actually hear the buds and stalks popping inside those sheds. Light,” the article adds, “cannot touch the plants at this stage, as it would retrigger a synthesis resulting in a more bitter rhubarb.”

I think that is what God is up to in your sufferings, dear Christian brother or sister. At the right time, He plunges you into the darkness of affliction. He does it to force you to grow in search of the light of His grace. The article even says light cannot touch the plants at this stage because it will result in a more bitter crop. Sometimes God keeps the light of His smile from us and leaves us in the darkness of our sufferings, but He is doing it to sweeten the harvest in our Christian lives as we learn in meekness to trust Him when we don’t understand and we don’t know why and we don’t know what is really going on or what He is really purposing. Affliction has been the psalmist’s teacher, and I know it has been the painful teacher in the lives of very many of you. And not a few of you can say with the psalmist, “Before I was affiliated I went astray, but now I keep your word. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” The testing of your faith has been productive of growing likeness to Christ. Your sufferings have made you humble and meek and tender and patient and kind. You resemble more the suffering servant of the Lord, despised and rejected of men. You’re more like the man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief. Suffering has made you like Jesus. That is its job.

But wait a minute, you say. I know some people for whom that has not been their experience at all. No, they had been going astray and then affliction came, and instead of repentance, they strayed still further. Suffering seems to have hardened their hearts. It has left them jaded and cynical and hostile and rebellious. They self-indulged and self-medicated in an effort to avoid their confusion and smother their pain. And we all know people for whom that is true, we suspect. And so our question needs to be, “What makes the difference?” Why should the same suffering in the life of one person become the occasion of their spiritual decline, and in the life of another, the occasion of their repentance and their spiritual renewal?” Or let me ask the question in a different way. “Suffering will come, affliction will come. How can we make sure, when it does, that it is productive of a good harvest in our lives? How can we make sure we don’t’ waste or suffering? How can we be sure not to waste our suffering?”

I think the really very beautiful structure of this first half of the stanza is meant to help us answer questions like that. Would you look at this first half of the stanza? Just notice with me how carefully composed and structured it is. The psalmist begins in verse 65 with a declaration that God has dealt well with him, literally, that God has done good for him. And then, he asks God to teach him. Verse 66, “Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.” That’s how this stanza begins. Now look down at verse 68 and notice how it ends, or this first part of the stanza ends. It ends in the same way that it began. “You are good and do good,” and then just like before he asks the Lord to teach him his statutes. And sandwiched in between these two statements of God’s goodness and these two prayers asking to be taught, right in the middle in verse 67 he says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” Do you see that structure? What’s the message?

He surrounds his reflection on affliction, on suffering, with meditation on the goodness of God. Specifically, he sees his affliction as God’s teacher in his life, sent for his spiritual good, painful though it is, only because he places them into a wider context. He refuses to consider his suffering apart from the goodness of God. “God is good. He does good,” he says. “His ways have always been good. He has always dealt well with me.” And keeping that simple conviction bolted firmly in place, quite literally here, all around any thought of what to make of his sufferings, doing that helps him view his sufferings not as punishment but as instruction. Not as the cruel blows of an enemy, but as the loving correction of a Father. Not as the hateful torture of a malicious persecutor, but as the difficult but oftentimes necessary lessons of a patient, divine tutor. When suffering crashes down on your head, it is maybe the simplest declaration of the doctrine of God, an affirmation that even a little child can make and understand, that will be your shelter and your refuge and your hiding place – God is good, all the time. God is good, all the time. Preach it to your heart through the pain. “You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to Your Word. God is good and He does good.” Refuse to consider your suffering apart from the goodness of God. God is good, all the time. Preach it to your heart. Never allow yourself to lose sight of it.

And with that knowledge firmly held before the psalmist’s gaze, notice now he begins to pray. In verse 66, “Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.” Sixty-eight, “Teach me your statutes.” Now look again at verse 66 and pay special attention to the order of what he says because I think it’s important to help us answer the question, “How can I make sure my suffering is productive of Christian growth?” Notice he doesn’t say in verse 66, “Teach me good judgment and knowledge so that I can believe in your commandments.” So he isn’t asking God to explain Himself and then, should God come to him suitably chastened, like a puppy scolded with his tail between his legs and offer an explanation to the psalmist that the psalmist will find satisfactory, well then the psalmist might be willing, finally, to believe God’s Word. That’s not what he’s saying. That’s often how we are, isn’t it? We’d like to believe, but God needs to explain Himself and His ways to us first. That’s not where the psalmist begins, is it? Look at sixty-six again. He starts from a posture of faith – faith in God, faith in His goodness. “You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word.” Faith in the Scriptures. “I believe in your commandments.” And then, trusting God, believing His Word, he asks for understanding. It’s Anselm’s famous motto, “Credo ut intelligam” – “I believe in order to understand.” I don’t’ believe because I do understand; I believe, and believing, I’m looking to You for understanding. Faith is not conditional on God’s first explaining Himself to us, but faith is the necessary foundation for ever coming to an understanding of God and His ways. Without it, we are blind.

So how do you suffer well? If affliction is your teacher right now, seeking to impart painful lessons in your life right now, how can you be sure to learn what affliction teaches. You take your stand in the unwavering goodness of God “who works all things together for the everlasting good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” And then, you ask Him to teach you. Come humbly as a pupil into His school and pray for understanding. And do notice, by the way, the understanding we are to seek is not understanding of “why this is happening to me.” That’s not a wrong prayer to pray; Jesus prayed it, didn’t He, Himself, at the cross – “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” It is Christlike to ask, “Why?” sometimes. We do need to be aware, though, that that question is rarely answered, and frankly if God were ever to answer it, I very much doubt we’d begin to comprehend the nature of the answer. But if you would pray instead for understanding of His will for you in your sufferings, of His Word to you, for deeper awareness of all the hiding places where your remaining sin continues to lurk, for understanding of how to kill it and root it out, if you’ll pray for understanding of how to trust Jesus through tears and trials in the dark, if you’ll pray like that, you can be sure your suffering will produce endurance, and endurance character, and character hope that will not disappoint. You will be able to say, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now, now I keep Your Word.” So we need to pray to learn in affliction’s school.

We Need to Practice The Lessons Affliction Teaches

Secondly, we need to practice the lessons affliction teaches. In verses 69 and 70, you’ll notice the psalmist alternating back and forth between a description of his opponents and the way they behave and the way he himself behaves. You see that alternating pattern in 69 and 70? On the one hand, 69, “The insolent smear me with lies,” as if they’re daubing their slander about the psalmist on the wall like graffiti for everyone to see. There are few things more painful, actually, than slander, than the slander of your character, and few things we feel more powerless, adequately to deal with than that. But look how the psalmist responds. In the second half of verse 69, “The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts.” They are characterized by lies; he is characterized by wholehearted faithfulness to the Word of God. “True truth,” as Francis Shaeffer called it, is what marks him out. A life shaped by the Bible, lived with integrity and honesty, according to God’s Word. The best response to slander is a life marked by truth.

Or look at the contrast again in verse 70. You see how he describes his opponents this time? “Their heart is unfeeling like fat.” That’s a graphic image, repellent actually – purposefully so, I think. Do remember the heart in the Hebrew Scriptures is not the center of emotion but of personhood, of ego and personality, of intellect, affect and will – all of it together. It is your deepest self. It is the real you. And he’s saying these people, they are unfeeling like fat, at the very core of their being. The Word of God doesn’t seem to penetrate this unresponsive layer that insulates them from the claims of truth. They are indifferent, impervious, unconcerned. But notice the contrast in the second half of verse 70. “Their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law.” They are unfeeling. I delight in your law. Christopher Ash’s little book on Psalm 119 is called, Bible Delight, and that sums up the whole attitude of the psalmist to the Word of God here very well. He delights in it; he loves the Bible. He loves the Scriptures; he loves God’s Word.

Now do look at your own heart, please, for a moment. “Which of these two portraits best describes me?” That’s the question we need to ask. Are you provoked by earnest Christians and by the claims of the Christian Gospel so that you are always complaining about the serious believers in your life – “They think they’re so much better than the rest of us. What a bunch of hypocrites!” Is that the narrative that plays in your mind? You find yourself smearing their reputations, if not in graffiti on a wall someplace, at least in your heart. Is your heart unfeeling like fat? Impenetrable, unresponsive, unconcerned about the call of Jesus Christ who has been calling you in the Gospel. “God making his appeal through us,” as Paul puts it to the Corinthians. “I’ve heard the Lord implore you in his Word to be reconciled to God, for our sake.” “God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

A great exchange, a great substitution has taken place. All the guilt of our sin, our hostility, our hatred, our pride, our lust, our greed – all of it, all our sin, laid upon Christ. And He paid for it in full at the cross and He offers anyone who would take it, in exchange, His own pristine righteousness, like a stainless white robe to put on to cover the filth of our sin. You have heard the Lord Jesus plead with you in the preaching of the Gospel, maybe again and again and again, for years – delay no longer! Come to Jesus today, guilty and unclean, and ask Him to make you clean and wash your sin away. What an exchange. Who wouldn’t want to take it? All my sin in exchange for the robes of His own righteousness. “It’s for you,” He says. “Take it. Put it on.” But you won’t do it. You’re not listening. His offer of mercy has just bounced off, gone unheard. Your heart is unfeeling like fat. What a terrible condition to be in – to have an unresponsive heart.

So how is it that the psalmist is so sensitive to God’s Word when so many around him are not? Remember verse 71? “It is good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. He’s so responsive. His heart is tenderized because affliction has been his teacher. In all his sufferings he has sought the Lord. He has cried for mercy. He has turned to God’s Word and not from it and everything has changed for him. His heart – hardened, wicked, unresponsive – is now sensitive, receptive; it’s a heart of flesh. And he’s beginning now to delight in God’s holy Word.

Maybe you are here this morning and the trials of life have been beating down on you for quite some time. I want you, please, to understand that your sorrows and sufferings are preaching to you. Just as surely as I am preaching to you right now from this pulpit, your sorrows and sufferings are preaching. And we’re both saying the same thing, you know. Turn to Christ! You are not enough! You need a Savior, a hiding place, a friend. Run to Jesus! He is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. He ever lives to make intercession for us. His heart beats with both understanding and compassion for your sin and your guilt and your sorrow. Get yourself to Jesus. That’s what your trials are saying. That’s the sermon affliction is preaching. Are you listening?

What was it that C.S. Lewis said? “We can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. If you won’t listen to me, will you listen to God’s greater preacher – your afflictions? In them, He is still pleading with you, shouting in His megaphone seeking to rouse you, calling you to come to Him, to find your hope and your rest not necessarily in the immediate relief or end of present sufferings, but in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom He offers to you freely to pardon you and preserve you and keep you, no matter how strong the flood of suffering that may overtake you. That’s actually what’s happened to the psalmist in our stanza, isn’t it? He had been going astray when affliction suddenly erupted into his life. He had been trampling underfoot the law of God and the Word of God, disregarding it, living for Himself. But now, verse 72, he can say, “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.”

There are some who claim to be Christians out there who teach a false gospel of health, wealth and prosperity. They think having Jesus is the fast track to thousands of silver and gold pieces. But amidst all his heavy afflictions, the psalmist has found where true prosperity lies, hasn’t he? It’s not in health or wealth. It is found in the Word out of God’s own mouth. That’s become his great treasure. “It is better to me,” he says, “than thousands of gold or silver pieces.” So very precious. Of course it’s so very precious because of the one to whom ultimately it leads us, to the true treasure, the pearl of great price Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Listen, here’s the point. Just get this, just this. To have Jesus, even with affliction, is better than thousands of silver and gold pieces without Him. He is offered to you for free, to be your great treasure. To have Jesus, even with affliction, is better than thousands of silver and gold pieces without Him. And so let me ask you, are you listening to God’s megaphone? Are you? Can you hear God’s best preacher calling you from yourself and your sin to your only Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ? If you hear His call, today is the day to answer and come running.

Let’s pray together.

Our Father, as we bow before You and prepare to come to the Table our Savior spread for us, we ask first that You would give us ears to hear what Your Spirit is saying to the church, that You would help us to hear Your Word and even the megaphone of affliction calling us back to Yourself. We have, many of us, we have gone astray. May today be the pivot point, the moment when we turn back, when we hear You and in repentance, with contrite hearts, come back to You. Grant that we, all of us today, right now, here, may do so, so find in Jesus our great treasure, whom to have is richer than thousands of gold and silver pieces. For we ask it in His name, amen.

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