Our Lord Jesus Christ was once approached by someone who said, good teacher, what good work shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus' response, as you recall, was, why do you call me good? There is only one good, and that is God. God is good, as we sang this morning. The psalmist in this next stanza of Psalm 119 comes to that conclusion five out of eight times, five out of eight verses. He comes to the conclusion and it doesn't hurt or it's it's not a coincidence because the Hebrew word for good begins with this letter Tate. It's the word Tov. Pastor Drake was in Israel long enough to get conversant in Hebrew and on the functional level and probably many times had to answer Bokra Tov, good morning. That means morning good, as they say in Hebrew. God is good. Now that's an expression that rolls off our lips rather easily and maybe a little bit too easily and maybe we don't pause to think about what we mean or to ask ourselves if we're sure about that when we go through great difficulties. As a matter of fact, Perhaps the second most commonly brought up objection to the faith of Jesus Christ, as it's revealed in the Bible, is this objection. If God is good, why does he allow evil in the world? If God is good, why did he allow this to happen to my sister? If God is good, why did he allow this to happen to my mother? And you can fill in the blank from your own life, things that if we were writing the script, we would not have written. But I hope you'll say amen to this. It's a good thing we're not writing the script. Amen. Amen. There was a young Russian who was accused by the secret police of the Tsar of Russia of a certain kind of capital offense, and his sentence was commuted at the last moment to exile to Siberia. But just to rattle him good, before they packed him off to Siberia, they put him in front of a firing squad and had the whole rigmarole, blindfolded him, ready, aim, fire, and pulled the trigger. And they were firing blanks, but they just wanted to ruin the man if they could. He was packed onto a train to Siberia, and as he was heading to Siberia, someone pressed a New Testament into his hand. And he went to Siberia, and he read it. and though beset with epilepsy and bad habits from an adult life largely spent in a dissolute way, that young man or that middle-aged man was saved, was brought to faith in Christ and went on to write books that you've heard of, Crime and Punishment, the Brothers Karamazov, and other great Russian novels, and his name was Dostoevsky. And in his novels, he wrestles with doubts and puts in the mouths of his characters various doubts and then also attempts to put in how he overcame those doubts. And he once wrote when someone was asking him about his literature and about his belief in Christ, he talked about his critics and he said, those blockheads never even came up with as good of a rejection of God as that which I overcame and he said this my hallelujah passed through a furnace of doubt my hallelujah passed through a furnace of doubt if God is good Why was I put in front of a firing squad and psychologically scarred by this mock execution? Why was I exiled to Siberia? My statement, God is good, God is true, God may be trusted, passed through a furnace of doubt. Now that's a testimony. that I'm a little bit more interested in hearing than just a simple, flippant statement, God is good. Well, I bring that up to say because the psalmist puts his confession that God is good in the context of suffering, of affliction, of chastisement, This is the same man, I believe, who says in Psalm 118, the Lord has chastened me severely, but He has not delivered me to death. He almost killed me with His chastening. So take your Bibles and turn with me to Psalm 119 again, and we'll move on to the next stanza, verses 65 through 72. Psalm 119, verses 65 through 72. Again, I'll just mention five of these eight verses mention the word good. Now, sometimes it's translated well as an adverb, but it's the same word. Psalm 1965. You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word. Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe 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 proud have forged a lie against me, but I will keep your precepts with my whole heart. Their heart is as fat as grease, but I delight in your law. It is good. for me, that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me or literally good to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver. In this passage, the psalmist teaches us to depend on God's goodness in trials and specifically to depend on God's goodness to change me. And I need changing. Second, that's verses 65 through 68. Secondly, he depends on God's goodness to teach me, verses 69 through 71. And in verse 72, he depends on God's goodness to change me. You see, very often the problem is, is that we have a different definition of what is good. And God has to do some things in our lives to bring us around to the correct point of view. On November 20th, 1820, the whale ship Essex was in the South Pacific. And you know this story because it's in the novel Moby Dick. A sperm whale, perhaps angered by being harpooned a few times, turned around and broadsided the T-boned, as we say in traffic, the whale ship Essex and broke it in half. And the men were getting into lifeboats, and as they were spilling into these lifeboats, most of them survived, and they had a good hope of sailing just a few days with favorable winds to this island chain that was downwind, the Marquesas Islands, where they would have been able to get rescued by a passing ship without too much difficulty. They were in the possession of very incorrect information. They believed that the inhabitants of the Marquesas were cannibals. And so they decided to sail against the wind. And they wound up being in those lifeboats for three months, and only eight of them survived. And I'll spare you the gory details. It's in the novel In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. But they did not know where their good lay. They did not know the right direction to travel. And the psalmist in this passage confesses that he needed correction. He confesses that his definition of good and God's definition of good were two different things. He needs correction. Look at verse 65. You have dealt well. You've dealt good with your servant. Oh, Lord, according to your word. Now, stop right there for just a second. And think about your own career. Think about your life. Think about the roadmap that you have traveled. And I know this is, you know, a group of believers, most and many of us are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I know that you probably want to say amen to verse 65 with all your heart. But is it always easy to look to God and say, Lord, you have dealt well with your servant? Because sometimes God's ways with us seem rough. Sometimes there's a difficult path that we are called to walk. There is a children's storybook published by one of the Mennonite publishers called Prince Hubert. I don't know if you've ever read that fairy tale, but it's a pretty good book. And it's the story of a very bratty prince. We probably should call him Prince Brat, but his name was Prince Hubert. Prince Hubert was vicious. He did not love justice. He oppressed the poor when he had a chance to influence his father's decisions. He was spoiled terribly. And so on the advice of his trusted counselor Malcolm, the king entrusts this young prince into the hands of a beggar woman in a village where he has to live as this beggar woman's surrogate son, Dame Martha is her name, for over a year. And as he is traveling with her, as he is going through these experiences with her, he experiences a lot of rough treatment and poverty and injustice heaped on him. And he learns what it feels like to be under an oppressive government. And when, at the end of the story, and here comes the spoiler warning, when at the end of the story he is restored to his father and the king and Malcolm are talking about why did it take such a severe course of discipline, the advisor Malcolm says, well, your majesty, it was the kill or the cure. It was the kill or the cure with this young man. It was severe discipline that put him in through all kinds of trials that was necessary to change him. And the psalmist admits something of the same experience. Look at verse 66. Teach me good judgment and knowledge for I believe your commandments. In other words, I lack good judgment and knowledge. Now, this is something that struck me about blind spots a few years ago. And maybe you've noticed this, but have you ever noticed about a blind spot that you can't see him? That's the thing about him, because I don't think I have any. And maybe you think that, too. I had a friend who had a ball cap that said, I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken. His ball cap said, well, I'm joking about that, but the psalmist says, I needed correction. Teach me what good is. Now, when we define good in theological terms, if you look it up in a dictionary, a Bible dictionary, you'll find out that God's goodness is his ethical perfection. He never does anything that's wrong. It's also a kindly disposition towards us that's born out of his hesed, out of his loving kindness, out of his gracious disposition. We read in the book of John of his fullness. We have all received and grace upon grace God's goodness and his graciousness towards us his propitiousness towards us and that and what I mean by propitiousness is that he is predisposed to justify he is provided a way of salvation through the death of his son, through the substitutionary death of his son in our place. God's goodness is related to his graciousness and his propitiousness. But when we define what that is, it as it affects us means that he acts consistent with his holiness in our best interests. And that includes correction, and that includes sometimes severe correction and difficult circumstances. Look at verse 67. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep. Your word now keep these two thoughts side-by-side because the poem does and that is How did the psalmist learn the depth of God's goodness? through affliction Now that's not the way I would write the script for my life. I If I could have it any way I wanted. But notice that for a second. He can't stop saying God is good. You do good. You do well to me. You teach me good judgment. Your law is good to me. But I learned that through affliction. Before I was afflicted, I went astray." Now, sad to say, sometimes we go astray on purpose, but many times we go astray through ignorance. This word, go astray, has the idea of making a mistake because of a lack of knowledge. Something you don't know. You may have heard about the wise man who was asked, how did you get to be so wise? And he said, I've had very, very valuable experience. Well, how do you get the right kind of experience? And the wise man said, you learn to make right decisions. How do you learn to make right decisions? And the wise man said, you make wrong decisions. And then you learn to make right decisions. Well, going astray has this idea of going astray through a lack of knowledge. And the psalmist says, affliction taught me the right way. Affliction taught me the goodness of God and taught me to stay on the right path. Now, we don't choose affliction. And sometimes we call affliction, like Dostoevsky did, a furnace of affliction. And the Psalms, as they talk about Joseph, talk about the affliction that he went through and talk about Egypt as a furnace of affliction. But you know, do you remember what Joseph named his two sons? What were his two sons? Now, we're not this far in Genesis yet, so I'll give you a pass here. I'll give you a little advance notice for this sermon. Drake, we'll get to. Ephraim and Manasseh. Who is older? Manasseh. Manasseh means forgetting, and Ephraim means fruitful. Now, if I could just hold that up as an example, when we go through affliction, isn't it wonderful if those are two of the things that are born in our lives, forgetting and fruitfulness? Well, the psalmist says God's affliction in my life was fruitful before I was afflicted. I went astray, but now I keep your word. God has corrected me. And so I come to this conclusion that I've already shared. He says in verse 68, you are good. And do good. Teach me your statutes. In other words, you've corrected me. You've taught me to walk in the right path through affliction. But will you continue to teach me? I want to mention that. Some people wrestle with the goodness of God when it comes to the doctrine of hell and of eternal judgment of God at a future point saying, depart from me, I never knew you, you who practice lawlessness. What is consistent about the goodness of God with the doctrine of hell? Well, as I mentioned a moment ago, the definition of God's goodness is that consistent with his holiness, he acts in our best interests. And you know what the scripture says? God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. There is one God and one mediator between God and man and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. And 1 Timothy 2 says, pray for all men, because God is not willing that any should perish. He desires, 1 Timothy 2 says, all men to be saved. Now, we can wrestle with this, with our beliefs about God's sovereignty, but I remember talking with a Scottish Calvinist, and you know that nobody is as Calvinistic as the Scottish. And I was talking to him about thinking about this. I had a young man in our church in Hannibal say to me once, as he was wrestling with predestination, he said, so do I love my co-workers more than God loves them? And I thought, you know, whatever else predestination means, it does not mean that. My Scottish Calvinist friend who is the president of Christian Focus Publishers, his name is William McKenzie, said, aye, and if you go to hell, You step over the crucified son of God to get there. And he said that even in his belief in this high view of God's sovereignty, we can say with full voice, God is not willing that any should perish. He desires all men to be saved and his goodness has caused him to make a way for them to be saved. You are good and do good. Teach me your statutes. Not only does his goodness correct us, but his goodness also teaches us things we did not know. Look at verse 69. This is in the context of opposition. The proud have forged a lie against me, but I will keep your precepts with my whole heart. Their heart is as fat as grease, but I delight in your law. One of the ways that God deals with our hearts is keeping our hearts tender. Now, there are two hearts being compared here, and the heart of the wicked is called fat. The heart of the wicked is called, you could say, thick. It's dense. And the idea of that metaphor is insensitivity. The idea of that metaphor is the heart of these opponents of mine isn't sensitive to the things of God, isn't sensitive to kindness towards others, isn't sensitive towards what's morally right and what's morally wrong. And so they have forged a lie against me. But in contrast, he describes his own heart, his heart that's been corrected, his heart that's gone through this furnace of affliction. And he says, I will keep your precepts with whole heart. with my whole heart, their hearts as fat as grease. But I delight in your law. The word that begins for 69 is a word that has the idea of smearing me. They have smeared me with a lie. but my heart will pursue your law. Their heart is as fat as grease, but I delight in your law. God teaches us, and he goes back to this theme of affliction as our teacher. Look at verse 71. It is good for me that I have been afflicted. Now, this is something that we don't say naturally on our own. You know, lots of times when we've been through something rough, we can't wait to get it in a rearview mirror. But do we ever have the grace to say, you know what? That affliction was fruitful in my life, and God, you are good. God, you dealt well with me in allowing that hard thing to come into my life. You know, if I can share personally, when we think back about Susan's brother, Keith, And the hardships that his muscular dystrophy brought him, first of all, and also brought into our family, there was a lot of work involved with caring for him and a lot of struggle that he did to survive and thrive for the 54 years that he did. But you know, as we look back on the difficulty of that affliction, muscular dystrophy, we look back and we say, Lord, you dealt well with us through this affliction. And Lord, you made that affliction fruitful in our lives. It is good for me that I have been afflicted that I may learn your statutes." The Proverbs say that a rebuke enters a wise man more than a thousand blows into a fool. Now, which one would you rather be? The wise man who responds to God's word or the fool who gets a thousand blows? Well, sometimes, sad to say, it's the kill or the cure. Sometimes, affliction is the only teacher that we're going to listen to. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest his correction. Proverbs 3 says in Hebrews 12 quotes, for whom the Lord loves, he corrects and scourges every son whom he receives. Now, no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous. But afterwards, it does what? It yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it. You hear the song, the proverb writer, Proverbs three, Hebrews 12, arguing the same way. Chastening makes fruit. Chastening shows God's goodness towards His children. Chastening and affliction brings things out of our lives that nothing else could have or would have brought. It's good for me that I have been afflicted. Turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 7. where the Apostle Paul talks about the church discipline situation in Corinth. And we read this in 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 8. 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 8. For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it, for I perceived that the same epistle made you sorry there only for a while. Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. The godly sorrow that affliction brings, that produces repentance. There's that great psalm, if you would turn back to Psalm 84, talking about place of affliction, becoming a place of fruit. Look at Psalm 84 and verse 5, a little to the left of our passage. This is a psalm that deserves a couple of sermons itself, but let's skip down to verse 5. where he says this, Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage as they pass through the valley of Baca. Baca means weeping. As the pilgrims pass through the valley of weeping, what happens? They make it a spring. The rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength. Each one appears before God in Zion. Now, there is a fruitless kind of sorrow. There's the sorrow of the world that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 7, but there's also a kind of sorrow where the tears are a blessing. Now, I know what the stock answer is here, but do people really change? I remember reading Larry Crabb's book, Inside Out, about 30 years ago. And he starts out in his foreword with this statement. Real change is possible, but it's harder than you think. And real change starts from the inside out. And one of God's best tools in his goodness is affliction and difficulty and chastening. Real change is possible. God works chastening. He works change. He makes the valley of weeping a spring. He makes the furnace of affliction a fruitful place. And so at the end, we say you're good and you do good. It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. I knew a couple of men in Hannibal who were very reluctant to memorize scripture. And in my ministry of encouraging people to memorize scripture, I'm very accustomed to adults telling me, well, I can't memorize. Not true. I'm too busy. Not true. But very often, especially from young family men, I would hear, well, I don't do that. Or I did that when I was a child. I don't remember. I just can't. My mind just doesn't work. I'm just too busy. And then something happens where a calamity comes into the man's life. Maybe it's a marital problem. In one man's case, it was infidelity. In another man's case, it was the threat of a loss of job. And all of a sudden, Our hearts become very teachable. All of a sudden, words like, in this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world, take on new meaning. All of a sudden, words like, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, take on new meaning. Now, this is something that probably is review for you. But if you don't have a plan for getting a hold of God's words, don't wait until the affliction comes to get one. And I can test you real quickly about whether you're getting God's words into your heart with three W's. Three W's, real quick. Okay, this is a test about whether you're getting God's words into your heart. What are you memorizing right now? What are you taking into your heart? What is it? Do you have an answer for that? Either there's an answer or it's nothing. All right? Secondly, when do you quote it? When do you share it with another human being? All right? It ought to be some scheduled time where you're going to give God's Word to someone. And then lastly, who is that person who is going to help you through? It's been said by psychologists that any time you announce a goal out loud, you make it 40% more likely to come to pass. And so the psalmist says, it's been it's good for me that I've been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. I'm teachable. And may the Lord give us soft hearts ahead of affliction to learn his word and take the pains necessary to get it into our hearts. Because, you see, lastly, The last thing we can depend on God's goodness to do is to change us. And specifically in verse 72, he talks about a change of values. He says, The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver. My values have been changed. Now, this is something that, you know, if I could have thousands of coins of gold and silver, as a matter of fact, so many of us are working jobs towards that very end. I need those thousands of gold and silver. But the psalmist says the law of your mouth is better to me than those thousands of coins of gold and silver. Job 23, Job says, I have esteemed the words of his mouth more important than my necessary food. He had had a change of values as well. And so through difficulty, through chastening, through the opposition of the proud who were smearing him with lies, the psalmist has learned to say God is good. He's learned to say it's good for me that I have been afflicted. He's learned to say that the law of God's mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver. There is this process at work in our lives where as we are offering up our bodies as living sacrifices, as we are not conformed to this world but are being transformed by the renewing of our minds, what happens? We prove what? What is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. The psalmist learned to call God good through the severe mercy of suffering. He learned that he could depend on God's goodness to correct him. He learned that he could depend on God's goodness to teach him. And lastly, he learned that he could depend on God's goodness to change him so that the things that he normally didn't value now he values. May we be able to say with the psalmist, Lord, you have dealt well with your servant. Lord, you are good and do good. Teach me your statutes. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your word that takes us down paths that we would not have chosen. And so often you see our truest good when we don't. And so often things that we would covet, things that we would claim for ourselves might actually be deadly. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end is the way of death. And so thank you often, Lord, that you chasten us, that you correct us, you change us. And Lord, with the psalmist, we would say that you do that because you're good, and you're good to us, and you deal well with us. Father, thank you for the difficult things and for the fruit that you bring into our lives, even through the furnace of affliction. And Father, if it's the lot of any person in this room to be in a furnace of affliction, to have their hallelujah passing through that furnace of doubt in your goodness, I pray that you'd carry that person tonight. You are good, Lord. Continue to teach us. Help us to be honest with you and with each other in the meantime, Lord, as we wrestle, as we learn to see how good you are. And we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.