Psalm 119, beginning in verse 81. These are God's words. My soul faints for your salvation, but I hope in your word. My eyes fail from searching your word, saying, when will you comfort me? For I have become like a wineskin in smoke, yet I do not forget your statutes. How many are the days of your servant? When will you execute judgment on those who persecute me? The proud have dug pits for me, which is not according to your law. All your commandments are faithful. They persecute me wrongfully. Help me! They almost made an end of me on earth, but I did not forsake your precepts. Revive me according to your lovingkindness, so that I may keep the testimony of your mouth." Amen. Thus far, the reading of God's inspired and Inerrant word. In several previous sections, we have heard about affliction and even affliction at the hands of those who are the proud who persecute the psalmist. Verse 69, the proud have forged a lie against me. Two sections ago, last week's section, let the proud be ashamed for they treated me wrongfully in verse 78. And then this week's section, the proud have dug pits for me, which is not according to your law, and so forth. And so there is this running theme now through several stanzas of this psalm about being afflicted by those who are the proud, humanly speaking. But there's a parallel theme, a superintending theme, even above that of what the wicked do. Just as Joseph said, you intended it for evil. The greater intention, the more significant narrative at the time, as God intended it for good. So we have verse 67 and verse 71 from two weeks ago. Verse 67, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. Verse 71, it is good for me that I have been afflicted that I may learn your statutes. And then last week, God's own personal goodness. Verse 75, I know, O Yahweh, that your judgments are right and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. Well, it is merciful of the Lord to give us these things to read and think and pray and sing, and yet in our turning to Him, in our using His Word and our depending upon Him, It can be a long and literally exhausting trial. Exhausting does not mean tiring. When something, when a supply is exhausted, it runs out. And it can be an exhausting trial to be afflicted. And that is the theme of the first three verses of this stanza of the psalm. When it says, my soul faints for your salvation, the word faint there is being used in an older sense. Not to feel really tired, like I feel faint, but to run out of strength. Someone who faints would fall unconscious. The Hebrew word behind it means something that is completely consumed. So my soul is consumed longing for your salvation, is the idea. But I hope in your word. Okay, so my soul has been hoping in your word, and I'm continuing to hope in your word, but I'm just about out. I am at the end. My soul faints for your salvation. but I hope in your word." So how has he been hoping in your word? 82, my eyes fail from searching your word. That is my eyes grow dim or my eyes grow blind. So in verse 81, he says, I've used up all my soul desiring your salvation. I'm still hoping in your word. But even hoping in his word, he's used up all his eyes, longing for his salvation from God's word. My eyes fail from searching your word, saying, when will you comfort me? So he goes to God's word for comfort, and he reads and he searches, but he is unable to draw the comfort that he needs. He's still doing what's right. He's still looking to God for that comfort. He's not saying that he can find comfort somewhere else, so he turns away from the word. He's not saying that there isn't comfort in God's word. No, he's saying there is comfort, but there is lack in me. My soul is unable to get this comfort. My eyes are running out and unable to get this comfort. He feels like one who is aged prematurely, or withered, or brought to an end of the life that is in himself prematurely. Verse 83, For I have become like a wineskin in smoke, Now we had this not too long ago. We talked about the wine and the wineskins and the new wine that was still fermenting needed to be put in a new wineskin that was still pliable and expandable. But the wine that was old wine that had completed the full fermentation process, all the sugar has been eaten up by the yeast and so forth, that it's okay that the wineskin over time loses its pliability, dries out, becomes rigid. In this particular case, he's talking about Not just has he dried up so that there's no life, there's no flexibility left in him. He feels dried up and shriveled and brittle, like the wineskin that has dried up and turned into a bottle, but that it has been artificially accelerated. by the smoke. So here's a wineskin that was left in a place where it was exposed to a fire that was too nearby, and the fire of the affliction has dried the life out of it, so that there's no life left in it. It's not able to function as it's supposed to, and if the wine isn't done fermenting, it's also, you know, hopefully this is a water bottle in this particular case, but if there was wine in it that wasn't done fermenting, it drying out too quickly may make it unable to serve its function, may even cause it to burst and break. So very, very strong images in verses 81 to 83. And yet he continues knowing and being sure that there is actual comfort and that it is in God, although verse 84 is very sobering. he might not get it until he dies. to the idea, and this is true, it happens sometimes, that the righteous are afflicted all the days of their life, or they are persecuted. In this particular case, those who persecute me, they are persecuted even unto death. So he's looking to God as his comfort, but he's understanding that it might not come until the end of his days. Maybe he's gonna be persecuted unto death, and now he's asking the Lord, how many of these persecuted days do I have to live? He knows just judgment and justice are coming. When will you execute judgment on those who persecute me? But he feels like he cannot bear the length of the time that it takes to get there. One of the repeated refrains of wise pastors and Bible expositors is, although it be a wicked sin to complain about God, It is a righteous habit to complain to God, to cry out to Him with the difficulty of your situation. Obviously not to accuse Him of anything, but to tell Him, I know what you are like, and I know that there is grace and there is comfort, but I cannot get it. And here is the situation I am in, and here is how depleted and used up are my soul and my eyes and my life. Verse 81, verse 82, verse 83. And then he starts describing the difference, again, between the proud who are persecuting him and the Lord who is afflicting him in faithfulness. The proud have dug pits for me, which is not according to your law. Okay, so they have done this. It has come in God's faithfulness, but God's commandments are also faithful. And he knows that the proud are going to be judged because God gives his law and God punishes those who break it. He's sure from verse 84, God is going to execute judgment on those who persecute him. And so sometimes we have to remind ourselves when people do things that are against God's law that there's hell to pay for that. There is literal hell to pay for that. And when we don't see it come for a while, sometimes we just have to remind ourselves from the Bible that it's true. It is. All your commandments are faithfulness. They persecute me wrongfully. Help me. Okay, so he is able to bring God's law to the God of the law and to say, look, your commandments are, I agree with your law. Their behavior is against your law. He says, they almost made an end of me on the earth, but I did not forsake your precepts. Meaning he didn't give up, he didn't say, well, righteousness is vain. like Asaph almost did in the beginning of Psalm 73. Well, in vain have I kept my hands clean. He didn't say it's not worth it. He said, God's commandments are faithful. God and the word really is faithfulness. All your commandments are faithfulness. In verse 86, it is faithful of God himself. to give us these commandments and he's sticking to them no matter what. But he feels like he's done. He's at the end of his rope. And yet our soul and our eyes and our life, verses 81, 82, and 83, and especially the last one, life, that is the subject in verse 88, although they are limited in quantity, They are not limited in source because God continues to extend life to us. So it's not like you have a limited amount of life in your soul and when it runs out, that's it. No, we have an income as it were. And the income is the grace of our God who continues to give us life. And so that ends up being, you know, there's a bunch of his expressing what his situation was like. But really there are two main requests for himself. Help me and give me life. Verse 88, very literally, give me life according to your chesed, according to your steadfast love. so that I may keep the testimony of your mouth." Yes, he is praying and desiring that God would execute judgment on the persecutor, but he doesn't know if that's going to happen in this life. And he doesn't know how many more days he's going to need to have life to seek God's word. Note that he's not even asking for life to be able to resist the persecutor or endure the persecutor. Verse 88, he said, I don't even have any life left for trying to keep the testimonies of your mouth. I don't even have any life left for reading my Bible and getting comfort from my Bible. My eyes fail from searching your words saying, when will you comfort me? So even for me to keep on looking for comfort in your word, I need more life than I currently have. Give me more, O Lord. And that is the circumstance that, and this is 3,000 years old. And it was surely true before that as well, but for 3,000 years, God has given his saints this psalm to pray and to sing, because his saints have experienced this over and over again in one and after another's life. And the Lord has been faithful. Everyone who has been his, who has gone through this, who has come to the end of themselves, even being able to look in His word. He has given life as their days, so their strength was. They didn't know how many there were, but God did, and He gave new strength for each day. And He brought them out of their affliction, and He executed judgment on their persecutors. There's 3,000 years of persecutors on the other end of this. Every one of them have had their sin judged with God's wrath. Some of them have even been converted and their sin was judged and punished at the cross, which was no small expression of God's wrath. And so when you feel like you are running out of the life, like you're dried up, And that's it, there's no moisture left. You may still cry out to God with this portion of his word, praying it and singing it. And by his mercy, having your heart conformed more to it by his spirit. Let's pray. Father, how often you have given us just the portion of your word that we needed for what we're in or what we were coming to. And we thank you for it here and in Matthew and in Numbers and in the Psalm of the month, which was actually selected years ago for this month. We bless your name, Lord, for how frequently you remind us that you are personally interacting with us, that although our soul, our eyes, our life has run out, yours cannot, and your grace in which you give yourself to be ours does not. And so come, Lord, give us more life according to your lovingkindness, according to your covenanted love, your chesed, that we may keep the testimony of your mouth, that we may keep searching your word, looking for your comfort. Be, O God, our comfort. Be our strength, be our life, be our joy. Help us, O Lord, to be able to take more joy from you. Open wide our hearts to have your love to us poured in by the Spirit so that the afflictions which you are faithful to take us through would themselves be diminished by comparison. We thank you for our dear brother who repeats to himself all day long light and momentary affliction, to remind himself that there is an eternal weight of glory waiting for us, but we pray that some of that eternality and some of that weight would be applied to our experience now, that your spirit would give us to know your greatness, that your spirit would give us the appetite and the spiritual digestion, the capacity to delight in you. Please help us, oh Lord, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.