Our scripture reading comes from Psalm 119, verses 65 to 72. Psalm 119, verses 65 to 72, on page 652. This is the word of the living 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 status. The insolence 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. Thus far the reading of God's word, may he add his blessing to it. Words reading. Brothers and sisters, have you ever thought about what would have happened if you never had felt the physical pain? You might say, yeah, that would have been great. But let me ask you another question. How would you have known about any problems in your body? Without any physical pain, you wouldn't be aware of any problems and you wouldn't have any chance to do something about it until it was too late. So we take painkillers when we have a headache. We go to doctors when we feel something wrong in our bodies. Physical pain help us identify those problems and guide us to find solutions. Sometimes we wish we would never felt certain pains. However, we should actually be grateful for having the sense of pain because there are some people don't have the sense of pain and they spend their lives in great agony and misery. So how about spiritual pain? How about our spiritual afflictions? One might think that physical and spiritual pains are two completely different phenomena. However, they are not that different from each other. We will look into Psalm 100, 19, 65 to 72 to find out those similarities and learn more about the Bible and what Bible says about our spiritual afflictions. So we will look at our passage with these four points today. Seeking God's face, God's loving kindness, holding fast to the law, humbleness before God. So first of all, Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm. With 22 stanzas correspond to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each verse in the set of eight begins with the same Hebrew letters. And 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. And this psalm is also one of the Torah psalms. The first book of the Bible is called Torah, which means law. But Torah also means direction. This is what the psalmist is also looking for, directions in his afflictions. And also, we will also look for the same direction today. In the first two verses, psalmist seeks the face of the Lord in his afflictions because he remembers the goodness of the Lord towards him in the past. In verse 65, let us read again. You have dealt well with your servant, O Lord, according to your word. He find courage when he remembers how God dealt with him in the past, and he implores to the Lord, teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments. Brothers and sisters, this also serves us as a model. Whenever we afflicted, the first thing we need to do is to remind ourself, God has been good to us. This should drive us to seek his face. As one of my professors says, our memory is our safeguard. We need to remember the goodness of the Lord and seek his face. We should not let ourselves get drowned by our emotions. We should not let ourselves to fill our hearts with fear and anger. We should remember. The psalmist remembers. He remembers that in the past, the Lord didn't forget his people in Egypt. He remembers how God delivered them from their enemies and led them all the way to the promised land. He remembers, he doesn't forget. He remembers God promises in Judge 2.1, God says, I brought you up from Egypt, brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, I will never break my covenant with you. Brothers and sisters, you should remember and hold on to same promise because you are under the covenant with the Lord. God will never break his covenant with you. He has promised. Having remembered the goodness of God, let us then with confidence draw near to throne of grace that we may receive the mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. Hebrew chapter four. So where are you going to find this mercy and grace exactly? The psalmist gives us the answer, in your commandments. This is where you're going to find the mercy and grace, in his commandments, in God's law, in God's words, in God's statutes. The whole psalm directs us to the word of God. And this repetition gives us a clear message. If you keep yourself away from the word of God, you will never find any comfort. The word of God is a lamp to your foot and a light to your path. It is living and active. If you don't seek the word of the living God, how can you find the way out from your afflictions? Sometimes we are indeed overwhelmed by our afflictions. We feel that we cannot do anything when we are in anguish. But beloved, this is not true. You belong to Christ Jesus. and he bought you by his precious blood. He has dealt with you good in the past, and he will do the same. So come to his presence of the Lord and pray like Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, who was overwhelmed by his enemies, but he didn't know what to do, but he prayed like this. We don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you. The psalmist then talks about God's loving kindness, which leads him to acknowledge his own sins. Let us read verse 67 again. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. Sin separates us from our beloved Father. Sin is the essential problem. The scripture is quite clear about our temptation and affliction. So listen to James. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil. And he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. As you can see, brothers and sisters, the reason for our afflictions is our own sin. We must acknowledge our own iniquity before the Lord, rather than blaming him because of our afflictions. He is not the source of our afflictions. The source is our sins. Yet, as a loving father, God uses those moments in our lives for discipline in us. Brothers and sister, God doesn't let us suffer in vain. In this fallen world, everyone has to bear the consequences of the fall, but God, as loving and merciful God, doesn't let us suffer in vain. He makes us more like his only begotten son, Christ Jesus. Even though God is not cause of the sin and temptation, he sovereignly utilizes them for our good. Spurgeon says, whipping will not turn a rebel into a child, but to the true child, a touch of the road is a sure corrective. So what do you understand from this saying? If you are afflicted and still think the Lord is to blame, those afflictions won't turn you into a child. And if you know that for those who love God, if you know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose, then you will learn from your afflictions. and be more like Christ, and we'll keep the word of the Lord, as Psalms says. Beloved, God is good and do good. He heals the brokenhearted and binds their wounds. God doesn't need to be compassionate or loving or graceful, yet he chooses to be all of those for his people. As it is written in John chapter three, God so loved the world, he gave his only son. God is talking about you in these verses. God loves you so much that he shed his blood for you. Look at yourself and around you. All you will see the goodness of the Lord. The goodness that his goodness suppresses this world brothers and sisters because we are on the way to celestial city where we will see our beloved father face to face and live with him forever without the bondage of the sin. So this is why the psalmist wants to know more about the word of the Lord, because all these promises are written in this word for us to take courage, to take shelter, and for us to remember. So do you pray the same prayer as the psalmist? How much are you willing to learn his statutes? How often do you remember his goodness? In verses 69 and 70, the psalmist shares his personal experience and how he was afflicted by ungodly men. These men are wicked men and rebellious people who don't pay any attention to the warning of the word of God. These people are the same people as Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians chapter two. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. They blame the children of the Lord with lies and create false deceptions about them. Their hearts are fattened because their hearts are full with the pleasures of this world. They don't want to be discipled by God. They only care for their own flesh. They have become senseless to the voice of the Lord. So these people still live our time as well. They have been doing the same thing as their ancestor had done, and their spiritual condition is exactly the same as the psalmist speaks about. So what should you do against these people when they start blaming you and when they start persecuting you? Let us again look the psalmist answer for us. He says, with my whole heart, I keep your precepts. And then he again says, I delight in your law. So the psalmist doesn't do anything except taking refuge in the Word of God. This is his answer. Because he knows that all the evildoers will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. That's why David says the same thing in Psalm 37. Trust in the Lord. and do good, dwell in the land, and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him, and He will act. He will act, He will surely act. Because God says in Zechariah 2, for he who touches you, touches the apple of the Lord's eye. You need to wait against this wicked man, brothers and sisters, you need to wait for the Lord act. Because Lord says, vengeance is mine and recompense for the time when their foot shall sleep for the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly, Deuteronomy chapter 32. So brothers and sisters, How faithful are you, the Lord, in those times? Are you also taking refuge in the word, or are you looking for anything else but not the word of God? Are you trusting the Lord's judgment and his timing? As 16th century Britain, Richard Sevis says, glory follows not as the day follows night. but as the spring follows winter. Winter prepares earth for spring, so do our afflictions sanctify, prepare the soul for glory. Bible also gives us so many example about this. First of all, Christ Jesus himself. He trusts the timing and judgment of his father. Mark 12, he says, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. And there's David, the writer of the psalm, who suffered under King Saul, but rejected to kill him because he trusted the timing of the Lord. And they all received the glory. And there are many other examples we can talk about, but yet the message is the same. Hold on the word of the Lord and put your trust in Him alone. And the last two verses of our passage today contains a confession. A confession of someone who understand the value of the affliction. So let us read those verses again. 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. So although he is afflicted, he gained, he had so much from his afflictions because he learned so much about the word. He says, it is good for me that I was afflicted. He is happy to be discipled by the Lord because they help him to learn more about the law. So the lessons from his afflictions are so precious to him that there are no treasure in the world to compare. He says, the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. His afflictions produced godliness in his life. His afflictions produced a fresh desire to learn more about the law. His afflictions produced a stronger and sincere faith. His afflictions were good to him. Brothers and sisters, this is exactly the opposite what the world has been teaching from the beginning. This world wants us to be like those people in the verse 70, whose hearts are fattened. The world wants us to just take pleasure and run away from afflictions. The world teaches us to blame others and blame God because of our afflictions. But our loving Father utilizes our afflictions so that, 1 Corinthians 11 says, when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So it is good for you, for us, that we are afflicted, that we might learn his statutes and not condemn alongside with the world. Beloved, God may use afflictions to show you where you need to grow in your spiritual life. I have mentioned to you the role of the physical pain in our lives and how miserable can be a person without the sense of pain. God does the same through our afflictions. As loving father, he disciplines us because he cares for us. He's interested in our spiritual growth because his children are so precious. They are bought by the atonement of the Christ Jesus and he promised not to lose any of them. So consider afflictions of our Christ Jesus. Isaiah says, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrow, yet we esteem him stricken, cemented by God, and afflicted. You have given the privilege of having afflictions as our savior. Because Paul says in Philippians 1, for it has been granted to you that For the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engage in the same conflict that you saw I had, and now that I still have. So if you are willing to be like Christ, God will surely discipline you, so you may become more like him. If you are willing to be like Christ Jesus, afflictions are good for your soul. Do not be afraid, God will not allow you to overwhelm by those afflictions. God is a covenant-keeping God. He never forgets the work of his hands. Another Puritan says wonderful things about this. Afflictions are a golden key by which the Lord opens the rich treasures of his word to his people's soul. So are your afflictions are a golden key or are they a padlock that helps you to lock the door of your heart? Are you willing to be like Christ and willing to share his afflictions? Are you ready to suffer for Christ? And when we look the whole psalm, this is the picture we have. This is the summary. The psalmist begins this passage by affirming that God is good and God has dealt with him good. He remembers the goodness of the Lord. He remembers. Amazingly, the first expression of afflicted person, he's not angry. He doesn't blame God. But he praises the name of the Lord. This is the first thing he does. And in his troubles and affliction, he seeks the face of the Lord. And he wants to know more about his word. Because he knows that all the afflictions are result of his own sins, not God's doing. And he knows that the only medicine for him and the only hope is the word of the living God. He doesn't want us to be like the wicked man, that the hearts are fattened. He doesn't want to be like them and just take pleasures in this world. He understands that these afflictions are good for him because he gained 10 times more than what he lost. The living word of the Lord is joy and hope. So brothers and sisters, this is the heart of an afflicted person that God delights to see. This is so important for us to remember that in Hebrew 12, God says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be wary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to enter. God is treating you as sons. For what sons is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are son or a daughter of the Lord, God is showing his love through afflictions in your life. God doesn't want you to suffer, but he wants to be more like Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, the love of God is our comfort in the time of affliction. His love comes in our lives by the gospel, which only can be found in the Bible. Our hope is in the living word of the Lord. So may the living word of the Lord be your guide and joy in the times of afflictions. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Let us pray. Almighty God, graciously grant that your word, which we have heard, may be inscribed inwardly on our hearts As we receive your word meekly with pure affections, may our hearts be filled with love and reverence for you. Cause us to bear the fruit of the spirit, to live in holiness, diligently following your commandments, and may it please you to use us to lead those who are lost, wandering, and confused into the way of truth. All this we pray for the honor and praise of your name, through Christ Jesus our Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.