Let's turn in our Bibles to Psalm 119. We're in the Yod stanza. Yod. Yod is 73 through 80 if you don't know. Psalm 119 is an acrostic, 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Yod, when Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass but not one word, not one jot or tittle of my word will pass away. Jot is the translator's best way of bringing across the idea of yod into the English language, a jot. And so it's just a little, it almost looks like an apostrophe for those of you who care. But let's give our attention to the reading of this beloved and helpful stanza where the psalmist, possibly Daniel, tells us how to think about affliction. Psalm 119, verses 73 through 80. Your hands have made me and fashioned me. Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. Those who fear you shall see me and rejoice because I have hoped in your word. I know, oh Lord, that your rules are righteous and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant. Let your mercy come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight. Let the insolent be put to shame, because they have wronged me with falsehood. As for me, I will meditate on your precepts. Let those who fear you turn to me, that they may know your testimonies. May my heart be blameless in your statutes, that I may not be put to shame. That's further reading of God's word. So last week I began to talk about this concept of affliction. Really this is a carryover from the prior stanza. You'll recall in the Tet stanza in verse 71 that the psalmist says, it is good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. reminded us last week that that is not how we as Americans think. Really, I don't care what nation you're from, it's not how we as humans think. Affliction is something that we want to run far away from. Affliction is something that you want to avoid. The successful and the powerful and those who have made it in life, they give you the impression that they haven't had any affliction in their life, but Oftentimes the contrary is the case, that affliction is that which teaches us something. What you learn is the most important thing, and for the Christian what we learn is greater dependence upon God, and what we learn is that God is better than all the siren songs of this world, and what we learn is meant to be used in a future setting to comfort others who find themselves in similar afflictions. And that's why last week we also read 2 Corinthians 1, 3 to 4. I think 2 Corinthians 1, 3 to 4, you don't need to turn there, but these words that Paul gives really sum up everything that The yod stands as saying, he says in 2 Corinthians 1, 3 and 4, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction so that, purpose clause, we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. And so, Christian, let me remind you tonight, though you should not go out looking for affliction, that's generally a bad idea, when it comes to you, number one, you need to realize God is the one who's sending it, not Satan, okay? And if Satan is the one that's carrying it out, that's just the little lapdog that's on God's leash and doing the bidding of the Lord, just like we saw in the case of Job, right? But that affliction is coming to you from the hand of a sovereign God. whose purpose is to glorify himself by turning your eyes upon him and looking less upon yourself and depending less upon yourself, being less independent and being more gloriously dependent upon him day in and day out with your money, with your body, with your health, with your spouse, with your family, or your lack of all those things or some of those things, being completely dependent upon him, finding your delight in him, listen, Not in the things that He gives you as an ultimate thing, you can delight in the things that He gives you, but the source of those good gifts, which is God Himself, should be where our delight is. And affliction helps us to do that. And so last week I gave you, I think, two ways to think about this, or let me put it this way, five things to remember as we think about being a comfort to others whom God has been to us. The first one was that verse 73 said this is what we were made for, okay? The Lord fashioned us for this purpose. Secondly, in verses 74, 79, and 80, May my life be a visual testimony to your faithfulness. We talked a little bit about that. And now that brings us to the third thing. The third thing we need to remember when we come or confront affliction, and it's this in verse 75. What we know shapes and informs our response. Let me say that again. What we know shapes and informs our response to affliction. Look at verse 75. I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. What is he saying? In other words, he's saying, I know that you, God, cannot do wrong and cannot treat me unjustly. You cannot treat me unjustly. Why? Because God is limited in what He could do? No, may it never be. God is not limited at all. It's not a matter of what God can or cannot do, it's a matter of what God has promised to you. What has God promised to you? To form you and shape you into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, and everything that comes through His sovereign hand is good. Now let me qualify that. Because that doesn't mean that the thing in and of itself, the means or the medium through which he works out his perfect plan in you is in and of itself good. Bad things are bad and we should always call them that. But Romans 8, 28, as you well know, says, all things work for the good of those who are called according to God's purpose and who love him. What that means is bad things can be worked and leveraged toward the good, and it's not that God is just getting in like in a damage control type of way, like he's coming into the triage when you come and your arteries are spurting blood, and he's like, oh, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna jump in and respond to this. No, he planned it. He planned it beforehand to come in and be a redeemer to you time and time and time again so that your gaze redounds back to Him as the source of all things, especially your delight. A sure far way to keep yourself from getting bitter and angry at God for either keeping something from you that you wanted or giving something to you that you didn't want is realize that if He did it, it is exactly what needed to happen for His glory and for your good. That is what it means to say I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. You see, God is much more faithful than we are, thank God for that. But even in his affliction, he is being faithful to his promise. It is impossible for God to wrong us or treat us unjustly because we are in his son, Jesus Christ. He does not punish, he disciplines. He does not punish, he disciplines. God is not your enemy anymore, right? He used to be. You remember when you were in Adam? Then he was your enemy. Never, listen to me, reformed people, never mistake the doctrine of predestination for meaning you're saved. I've always been predestined. Predestination and conversion are two different things. And if that's a revelation to you, I'm glad that it has finally dropped. I often hear people saying, well, I guess I've always been saved because God predestined me. No, he predestined you to be saved, right? So he put an appointment in the appointment book for the scales of your eyes to fall, for your ears to be unstopped, for your heart of stone to be ripped out and a heart of flesh to be given, the Spirit of God to be put in there, the law of God written on the tablets of your heart. There was a point where you were in darkness. And you were transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the beloved light of His Son Jesus Christ. It's called conversion. We make a lot of it here. And we need to realize that God was our enemy before then, but now He is our tender Father. And He doesn't punish us, He disciplines us. And there's a big difference between those two. And if I could trace back the difference to what it is, it basically comes down to this. When I think of punishment, I think, again, of God as enemy. When I think of discipline, I think of God as father, good father. Some of us have had horrible fathers, not that kind of father. That's the kind of scumbag father that God is not. God is a tender, loving Father. He is the Father par excellence. He is the Father who never does wrong. He is the Father that, even in afflicting you with discipline, is making you something better for His glory and for your good. He is a tender Father. Job thought that God had done him wrong, and he was disabused of this notion at the end of the book. But God's afflictions are according to His faithfulness. What are some examples of that? Well, you think of Joseph. What is it, Genesis 15-20? You know the story of Joseph. He gets sold into slavery by his brothers. All these bad things happen to him. What does he say at the end? You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. That is God being faithful to his promise. That is God carrying out his sovereign plan. Not again, God scrambled to fix your screw up. God isn't in triage trying to respond. God is fleshing out what he intended to do before the foundation of the world. In faithfulness, he is a skilled surgeon that knows exactly what he's doing. So to take this attitude is a tall order, and that's why the psalmist adds in 76 and 77, Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant. And that's the fourth thing that we want to see here. God is gracious to sprinkle in loving kindness throughout the affliction. God is gracious to sprinkle in loving kindness throughout the affliction. Aren't you glad that God doesn't always give us all affliction all the time? And aren't you glad that God doesn't give us all blessing all the time? I mean, even in seasons of blessing, there's still that sense of the mundane, right? Just the doldrums, just not good, not bad, just mundane. Or maybe there's a little affliction sprinkled in, but God is gracious to sprinkle in loving kindness. And we shouldn't be Pollyannish about our affliction, right? We shouldn't think, oh, if God has given me this, it's all good. No, remember, make the distinction between God doing good things through bad things, right, because he's sovereign, It's not native to our Adamic nature to believe in the faithfulness of God in our affliction. In order to really believe sovereignty, we need the loving kindness of God. And in the midst of all Job's sorrows, God never took away the promise of a Redeemer. Job said in Job 19.25, for I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last, or that is at the end, he will stand upon the earth. Throughout all of his affliction, Job still believed. He still had the promise that his Redeemer was gonna come, and I happen to believe that that's one of the main things that got him through the severe affliction that the Lord inflicted upon him. So what will comfort you in midst of affliction? What will comfort you in the midst of affliction? Listen to me very carefully, this is really important. Took me a long time to learn this, and I wouldn't even say that I've totally learned it, I'm still learning it. What's gonna comfort you through the midst of your affliction? Getting through the trial? Is that what's gonna comfort you? Or is it the love of Christ and the inheritance of heaven? Whether or not I get through the trial, no matter how long the trial, the fact that while I do not know when it will end, I know that one day it will end, right? Because God is going to bring it to an end. So the faithfulness of God to give me that promise regardless is what's going to get me through the trial. Because, I mean, let's be honest, some people who have terminal cancer don't get through that earthly trial, do they? They don't get through it. So what are they looking forward to? They can't look forward to a concrete promise of overcoming cancer in this life because God has not given that to them. But what they can look forward to is the promise of the eschaton, the promise of eternal life, which God, yes, has concretely given them. So loyal love comes to the psalmist through the promises of God, and all of the promises of God are yes and amen in whom? In Christ. This is a good scripture for you to memorize, 2 Corinthians 1.20. For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. All of the promises of God find their yes in Jesus Christ. And we need to remember in the midst of trial that no temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man, but God is faithful. And He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. So, I need comfort. I need comfort, and so what do I do? When I need comfort in the time of these afflictions that the Lord has given me, I go, as the psalmist did here, Verse 76, let your steadfast love comfort me according to your what? To your promise to your servant. I go to that promise, I cling to that promise, and like writing a check, I write out that promise to my name and I take it to the bank of God's promises. And I call on him to cash it, to cash it in his time and to cash it in his way. And I don't remind him of it in the sense that like he has amnesia and he forgot, but I'm claiming it, not in the abusive way. But if God has given you a promise, you ought to claim it. You ought to say, God, give me this promise. Give me this promise. Give me this comfort in the midst of affliction. That's what you promise. Give me this delight that the psalmist talks about. That's what you promised. Give it to me, Father. I beg of you, please, by the mercies of Jesus Christ. You take it to the bank and you ask him to answer you. Let your tender mercies come to me. God will give you all you want. Look at verse 77. Let your mercy come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight. You know, when you think of mercies, you think of what Jeremiah says, his mercies are what? They're new every morning. Aren't you grateful for that? Aren't you grateful that God has an infinite, endless, boundless storehouse of mercy? It's not like God comes to you on any given day and says, okay, you've got 16 ounces of mercy. You better make it last, right? You better stretch it out as long as you can. Be frugal with that mercy because that's all you got. We are rationing out, times are tough, and we only give so much mercy. No, no, no. God says, you ask and I'll give you mercy. You ask, and I'll give you mercy. Somebody once asked me, well, what is mercy? Don't have a concrete physical concept of mercy. Mercy is not giving you what you deserve. So think of in any given day all the things that you deserve, both from an eternal perspective and a temporal perspective, right? Like if a camera were to follow you around and see all the ways in which you are disobedient and unfaithful to the Lord, all the punishment that you deserve, and yet you don't get that, that's mercy. That's mercy. And God's mercies are new every morning. That's why the psalmist says, let your mercy come to me, an unending stream, just like an IV, just put it in my arm and keep it coming, no rations, endless amount, give me mercy. God delights to give you mercy. It's just a gracious cycle. The more mercy he gives, the more we delight in his law, as the latter half of verse 77 says, right? Let your mercy come to me, that I may live, for your law is my delight, so I delight in his law, and then I want more mercy, and I ask for more mercy, and he gives me more mercy, and because he gives me more mercy, I delight in his law, and it's this endless cycle that the child of God is engaging in all the time, begging for mercy, getting it, delighting in his law, coming back again and again. So then finally tonight, In verse 78. May human instruments of my misery be put to shame. Look at what he says in verse 78. Let the insolent be put to shame because they have wronged me with falsehood. As for me, I will meditate on your precepts. Now I want you to see something very, very interesting here. We've talked about imprecatory prayers and imprecatory psalms. If you don't know what that means, an imprecatory psalm or imprecatory prayer is when you're preying down judgment upon your enemies, right? God, if they will rebel against you, if they are an enemy for the cause of Christ, you know, when we balance the New Testament, it's kind of a two-step prayer, right? It's like, first, Lord, may they repent. Give them repentance, right? But if they won't repent, then may judgment be on their heads, right? Who is really, which two disciples were really good at this? James and John, the sons of thunder, right? Yeah, they were really good. Call down fire from heaven. You want me to call down fire from heaven and disintegrate these people? Well, when you put it like that, it sounds really bad, okay? But yeah, they weren't totally off, but I would say this. An imprecatory prayer is a very, very dangerous prayer to pray. We can pray it. There is a place to pray it, but I want you to notice what the psalmist does here. I think it's fascinating. Let the insolent be put to shame, because they have wronged me with falsehood. But, as for me, or in other translations, yet I will meditate on your precepts. You see what he did there? One of the things that imprecatory prayers can do is they can get you brewing in a hateful kind of way on your enemies, right? Just brewing and thinking and having those imaginary conversations and engaging what I call stinking thinking, where all you can do is think about that person. And boy, God, they really deserve judgment. And boy, God, thank God you gave us the green light to pray these imprecatory prayers So I could just call down fire and judgment and thunder upon them, just smoking corpses. Well, no, no, no. The psalmist says here, he says, let the insolent be put to shame because they have wronged me with falsehood. But as for me, you know what I'm going to meditate on? Not on that. I'm going to meditate on your precepts. I think that's fascinating. And I would commend that to you. I commended it to myself in preparation because I have a tendency to brew on those things. And you know what that does? That makes for a bitter heart, friends. It just makes for a bitter heart. And bitterness is something that needs to be rooted out in the congregation. In fact, the book of Hebrews says this, quoting the book of Deuteronomy, let there not be any root of bitterness amongst you. He's not talking about an individual root of bitterness in your heart, though that may apply. What he's talking about is bitterness that is in the congregation, and it spreads. It spreads its bitterness throughout the congregation, and yes, it happens even in our congregation. You have to be very, very careful of that. So what do we do to combat that? Well, we do what the psalmist says. Yes, there's a place for Lord. Call them to repent. I'm not thinking of Christians here. I'm thinking of pagans. Call them to repent. Father, give them repentance. May they believe in Jesus Christ. May they be saved from the eternal wrath to come. But if they won't, then Lord, have your way with them. Let judgment fall upon them, but ask for me, I'm gonna dwell on your precepts. I'm gonna meditate on your precepts. I'm not gonna dwell on a state of hatred. So God has done what he's done in you and is doing what he's doing in you to bring you to himself so that others might know the same God through your testimony. So I just commend that to you tonight. The things that the Lord has taught you through your trials need to be repeated. You need to speak to others about them because people in the congregation need to learn from you. They need to be comforted with the comfort that God comforted you with when you went through that affliction. And guess what? You can't even begin to let that loose. You can't even begin to share those things unless we're in communion with one another, which is what we're doing tonight. You know, we're gonna stand up here in a moment, and we're gonna pray. I already know of some wonderful praises that we're about to share, and I'm grateful for that, but you know what? Some of us have praises, some of us have petitions. Some of us have tears, and you know what we need? We need people's shoulders to cry on. And this is where we do it, friends. We don't do it online, we don't do it with emojis, emojis with tears, we do it with real tears, right? We don't do it with emojis, with smiley faces, or you know what, we do it here, amongst the people of God, Sunday, home group, as we live life together under the grace and banner of God's love. So let us look tonight to Jesus Christ who took all of our affliction and all the affliction that God would unleash in an unmitigated form on all those who rebelled against him. He took it and absorbed it on Calvary so that we would never have to taste a drop. And that is what God has done for us in Christ. And out of gratitude, let us live forth. with our minds, our hearts, our hands, and our feet. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the sovereignty that stands behind the affliction that you send toward your people. We thank you that it's not for nothing, it's for something, Father. We thank you that you're doing something in us, and I just pray that you would enlarge our faith, Father. We need you to enlarge our faith. We oftentimes walk in weak faith, questioning your ways, questioning your methods, questioning your intention, Father, if we're really honest with ourselves, thinking that you are a killjoy, thinking that you are our enemy, where in reality, Father, you are a tender father to us, and what we need to do is we need to align our perception of reality with your will as you have laid it out in history, knowing that you are sovereign, and not one affliction, not one trial, not one being cast into the crucible comes apart from your sovereign finger. And so, Father, help us to believe that and not just declare it, and help us to live it, Father, not only in our own lives, but as we prop up others to do the same in theirs, we pray in Christ's name.