Turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 119. Psalm 119, our text for this afternoon, is verses 65 through 72. And as you're turning there, I would just like to thank you for the opportunity to come and bring God's Word to you this afternoon. It's a privilege to serve among God's people. Psalm 119. starting at verse 65. 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 than thousands of coins of gold and silver. This is the authoritative and infallible Word of God. Well, I know of a young man who received severe third-degree burns on his arm. And when he was at the burn unit, he had to go into this dreadful contraption known as the debrider. And what it was is they had to go into this He had to go into this kind of vat with this disinfectant liquid in it, and the dead skin on the burn had to be scrubbed off. You can imagine how painful that would be. And people in the burn unit had various nicknames for this contraption because they would hear moans and screams and cursing coming out from this wing of the hospital. Well, this young Christian man had to go through that and he felt the pain. But on one occasion he came out and he looked at the nurse who was administrating this scenario And he said, thank you. And the nurse was speechless. Finally, when she recovered consciousness, so to speak, she said, I have done this for hundreds of patients and you are the first one to say thank you. Well, let me ask you today, do you ever thank the Lord for his hard providences in your life? As you look back, do you see his mercy and his goodness in bringing you through trials and afflictions? Well, here we are in Psalm 119, as you know, the largest chapter in the Psalter. In fact, it's larger than many books in the Bible. It contains 176 verses, and the entire thing is a prayer, the prayer of a godly man to his covenant Lord. And it's structured as an acrostic poem, each stanza, the verses of each stanza starting with the successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. So there are 22 stanzas. corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And there are eight verses in each stanza. And each of those verses will start with the same letter. So if it were in English, it'd be like the first stanza, all the lines start with A. Second stanza, all the lines start with B, and so on. And the author, in fact, is unknown. It's perhaps of post-exilic authorship. But we know that the context of the author of Psalm 119 is a life of pilgrimage through suffering. But what we see is that this suffering does not drive the psalmist away from God, but it actually drives him towards God and strengthens his grip upon God's word. In fact, the main theme of Psalm 119, as you know, is the law of God, the word of God. And the psalmist uses eight different terms to describe that word of God. And his two main prayers throughout the psalm are, Lord, give me understanding and give me life. So here's we come to the stanza called Tet, near the middle of the psalm. We see that in this particular stanza, The psalmist is reflecting upon a particular experience of suffering. But it's interesting to know that within these eight verses, a form of the word good appears six times. And so what we're gonna see here this afternoon is this, that the mature Christian sincerely recognizes the goodness of God as he reflects upon his experiences of suffering. The mature Christian sincerely recognizes the goodness of God as he reflects upon his experiences of suffering. We'll see this under three headings, the goodness of God, the evil of affliction, and the preciousness of scripture. So first, the goodness of God, verses 65 through 68. Here we see the godly man justifying God in the midst of his pain. The psalmist begins with a profound recognition in verse 65. You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word. Now here, the psalmist could be referring to his whole life, saying that throughout all the troubles, toils, and snares of my life, you've always dealt well. But more likely, he's referring to a specific situation that he's just experienced. And he's saying, you have dealt well, literally, you have done good, as opposed to doing evil in this affliction. Suffering causes many people to shake their fists at God, to be angry at Him, and to say, basically, where were you, God, when I was going through this affliction? We may be tempted to accuse God. We may do it verbally, or we may simply accuse God in our hearts, in our thoughts, in our feelings, harboring resentment and thoughts such as, I don't deserve this, or God, how dare you do this to me? But the psalmist here justifies God and sees his unchanging goodness behind all that has happened. He says, you have done good to me. And he uses the covenant name of God here, Yahweh, and refers to God's covenant promises that he had given to his servant. This is the God whom he knew intimately, and he had a history with, and he knew these promises. What promises would he be referring to when he says, you have dealt well according to your word? Well, perhaps Deuteronomy 31.6, that I will never leave you or forsake you. Or perhaps Isaiah 43, 1 to 3, that though you walk through the water, I will be with you. And when you walk through the fire, the flame, it will not destroy you. Or in the New Testament, how about the promise Romans 8, 28, that all things will work together for good to those who love God. Or 2 Corinthians 12, 9, that my grace is sufficient for you. These are promises that These kinds of promises the psalmist was clinging to and saying, you have done well. Now, in order to feel the full force of this conclusion of the psalmist, you have to realize that these words were not spoken as he sat back in his easy chair and reflected upon a life ease no this is Horatio Spafford saying it is well with my soul as he sailed over the place where just a few weeks early earlier four of his daughters drowned this is John Owen speaking about the sovereignty of God and all things after losing 10 of 11 children in infancy this is Job suffering indescribable pain and then saying after it all the Lord has given The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You have dealt well with your servant. This is a profound recognition. And it leads to a mature request in verse 66. Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe your commandments. Having gone through this experience of profound pain and suffering, And having seen the goodness of God, what does the experienced and mature Christian desire? What does he want more than anything else? He wants to be good like his good God. Teach me good judgment and knowledge. Literally, teach me good taste, good spiritual taste. He says he already believes God's commandments to be good, right, and true. He already has an intellectual assent that these commandments are good, but he wants more than that. He wants an inward spiritual taste to be able to discern between good and evil. He wants the powers of his discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5.14. For he knows, as Job says, that the ear tests words even as the palate tastes food. It's not enough for us to understand God's commands in our minds. We need to feel the goodness of those commands in our hearts and we need to have an inward orientation and ability to discern practically between what is good and what is evil. And this is a process that continues throughout the Christian life. And so the psalmist prays for this after this experience of suffering. But the psalmist knows that his judgment has not always been good. There were times where he fell foully into sin. And so this leads him to a humble admission in verse 67. He says, before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now I keep your word. What a supernatural thing this is. To admit, after looking back on suffering, that you needed that suffering. You needed it. for your sanctification. Children, when your parents discipline you, do you immediately turn around and look at them and say, thank you mom, I needed that. No, it's not natural to thank someone for discipline. No discipline is pleasant at the time, but painful. And so this humble admission is supernatural. It's worked in us by the grace of God to be able to do this. Now, not every affliction, as you know, is God's chastening for sin. Job was a man blameless and upright, a man who shunned God and feared evil. And yet God brought much affliction to him. Sometimes affliction is meant not as a chastening for sin, but as a strengthening of grace in our lives. Christ himself, Hebrews 2 says, knew no sin, but had to be made perfect through suffering. And so we know that not every experience of suffering is because of some particular sin. But when we are afflicted, we should always begin by asking ourselves, is this a chastening for sin? Perhaps there is a sin that I have to deal with. But then if we honestly come out the other side and say with Paul that I know nothing against myself, well then we can pray for God's grace to grow that that holiness and that righteousness and that perseverance within us. But in the case of the psalmist, it was chastening for sin. We know this. The Holy Spirit showed him that he was indeed straying from God's paths and that he had to be brought back like a shepherd using his rod to bring the sheep back in line. Have you had similar experiences in your life? Can you look back on affliction which God has ordained in your life, and say humbly and honestly, I needed that affliction. And I am more faithful now than I was before. I'm not what I desire to be. I'm not what I will be. But by God's grace, I'm not what I once was. Have you studied at the sanctifying school of affliction? Well, this brings us to an experienced confession of the psalmist in verse 68. He says, you are good and you do good. Teach me your statutes. Having reflected on all of this experience and all of God's goodness, he then traces the goodness of God's hand up to the goodness of God's character. And he says, you are inherently good. There's no evil in you. You are light, there is no darkness in you, and everything that you do in this world is good, even if people don't realize it. All the ways of the Lord are righteous. Psalm 145 verse 17. And then once again, the psalmist's desire in light of that is that he might be taught to be like God. And to be taught his statutes, to be able to follow his statutes from the heart. But you know, although God is good in all that he does, we must be careful in distinguishing between the primary cause in all that comes to pass, which is God himself, and the secondary causes which God uses to accomplish his good purposes. And this brings us to our second main heading, the evil of affliction. In verses 69 and 70, we see that the rod of affliction which God uses is often evil in and of itself, even though it's used to accomplish God's righteous ends. Sometimes well-meaning people get this strange idea in their minds that affliction and suffering is inherently good. But it's not. It's a result of the fall. It's God's curse upon creation. And in fact, suffering will harden your heart and make you bitter towards God if the Holy Spirit doesn't sanctify that affliction to your heart. Suffering is not good enough itself, but needs to be used by the Holy Spirit. In the psalmist case, we see that the instrument that God used was an instrument of intentional destruction. Look at verse 69. It says, the proud have forged a lie against me. Literally, they have smeared or plastered falsehood all over me. They've destroyed my reputation. They're out to seek my harm. They're out to destroy me. And I think it's better to take the next line in the present tense, the Hebrew can be translated that way, so that there's a contrast, a present contrast. Even though I keep your precepts with my whole heart, yet these wicked men still spread rumors and lies about me. They're bent on my destruction. These people are wicked men. They're proud and arrogant. And not only that, verse 70, they're instruments of brutish insensibility. says their hearts are fat as grease, or as the ESV puts it, they're unfeeling as fat. They're dull, they're callous, they're morally insensitive, their consciences have been seared. There's not a lot of nerve endings in fat. And you see the contrast. He says, my heart delights in your law, but theirs is dead to it. They don't feel the goodness or the weight of your law. They are evil. So although God is using these people for his own good purposes, they are still morally evil and they will be punished in due time. They are still culpable for their sins. Listen to the way the Holy Spirit explains this paradox in Isaiah chapter 10. In Isaiah 10, Isaiah is speaking of the Assyrians and how God is using the Assyrians to chasten his people Israel. Starting in verse five, he says this, woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, that's Yahweh speaking, and the staff of whose hand is my indignation. I will send him against an ungodly nation, that's Israel, and against the people of my wrath, I will give him charge to seize the spoil, to take the prey and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Yet he does not mean so. nor does his heart think so, but it is in his heart to destroy and to cut off not a few nations. And then jumping down to verse 13, for he says, by the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent. Also I have removed the boundaries of the people and have robbed their treasuries, and so I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. And then verse 15, shall the ax boast itself against him who chops with it? Or shall the saw exalt itself against him who saws with it, as if a rod could wield itself against those who lift it up, or as if a staff could lift up as if it were not wood? See what he's saying there. They're mere instruments, and they have their own intentions, and those intentions are evil, and they'll be punished for those evil intentions, but superintending all of it all is the good hand of God wielding that wicked ax for his good purposes. Joseph understood these two levels of purposes well when he said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. It was no passive permission. It was an active, eternal plan, God executing his eternal purposes. And yet, the sin came only from the sinner and not from God himself. As the Puritans used to say, God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. And this is, of course, most clearly seen in the murder of the Son of God. As Peter says in Acts 2.23, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. You're guilty, hands of men are lawless, but it was according to God's definite plan and foreknowledge. So are you suffering under the power of someone else's sin or under the curse of death and suffering? You don't have to pretend that these things are good in and of themselves. Death, in fact, in Revelation is called the last enemy. Rest assured that God will deal with this evil, moral or situational evil, in due time, but then trace the secondary causes up to their primary cause and spend most time there recognizing the sovereignty of God and the goodness of his character. Well, this brings us finally to the third main heading, the preciousness of scripture in verses 71 and 72. Here we see that the Christian who has truly matured through suffering will prize God's word more fully now than he did ever before. You see, after considering the evil of affliction briefly, the psalmist returns to his main theme of the goodness of God. And he offers this sincere summary. He says, it was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your statutes. Again, this is no pious cliche. This is no general spiritual platitude. Oh, yeah, all things work together for good. No, this is a sincere, experienced, mature reflection. Wow, it was good. And what was the result? You see, he saw the results of this affliction. He knew that this affliction was not meaningless. No, it was packed with profound purpose, bringing about a beautiful result. And what is that result? Was it riches? Was it fame? Was it being relieved of his suffering in the end? No. What does it say there? He learned to obey God from the heart, thereby becoming more like him. As we reflect upon this psalmist and his suffering, we know that all the psalms point to Christ, and that Christ himself is the ultimate sufferer, the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief and suffering. Perhaps you've experienced this in your own life, that your own suffering can help you to get a glimpse into what Christ experienced when he came to atone for sins and to take our penalty upon himself. Well, the psalmist ends with a supernatural appraisal in verse 72. He says, the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold or silver. Now, whether his suffering actually involved poverty, we're not sure. Some suffering, by its own nature, weans us from the things of this world. But one thing is for sure, the discipline worked. The psalmist learned his lesson. and now he prized scripture. He found that through his suffering that nothing is more precious to him than the word of God contained in this book. Because where else are you going to go in the face of death? Where else are you going to turn when you wake up in the middle of the night and there's nobody there and you're filled with fear? Or where else can you go when family and friends simply can't understand the depth of your sorrow. Well, the law of God here, the term refers in the broadest sense to the entire Torah with all its gracious promises, as well as its dutiful commands. And so we see that the affliction is God's means of intensifying our appetite for God's word. Has that been your experience? Well, we've seen that the mature Christian sincerely recognizes the goodness of God as he reflects upon his experiences of suffering. Perhaps you haven't been severely burned, or lost 10 children in infancy, or been smeared with lies, or perhaps you have. But take some time to think back upon God's hard providences in your life. Have they driven you to your knees in prayer? Have they shown you more of your sin and your need for a savior? Have they increased your appetite for the word of God? Have they weaned you from the pleasures of this life and helped you to long for heaven? Can you see the goodness of God? Perhaps you're in the midst of a severe trial right now, suffering moral or situational evil. Don't pretend that that suffering is in itself pleasant or even neutral. But ask yourself this question, prayerfully pondering it before God. What good purpose might my sovereign Lord have in bringing this affliction into my life? How might he be furthering his work of sanctification in my life? Is there a past sin to be repented of? Or what current graces might he be trying to strengthen? And if you come up short on answers and simply can't discern God's good purpose in the midst of your affliction, then hear the words of a wise old Puritan who said, you must trust God's heart when you cannot trace his hand. And so we can say with the words of the psalmist, when through fiery trials your pathway shall lie, my grace, all sufficient, shall be your supply. The flame shall not hurt you. I only design your dross to consume and your gold to refine. Let us pray. Father, thank you for the hard providences in our lives. We praise you for your wisdom, which far transcends our own. We praise you for your mysterious sovereignty whereby you can use evil and sinful means to accomplish your good and perfect purposes. Lord, give grace to your children to be able to look back and to sincerely see your goodness. Lord, give grace to those who perhaps right now are struggling in one way or another. wrestling with affliction. O Lord, we know that it is often against the dark backdrop of affliction that the brightness of your grace shines all the more. And so, Lord, we pray for this, that Christ might be exalted, that others might be drawn to you, that you might be pleased, and that we might have increased joy. And we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. May the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.