Psalm 119 verses 81 through 88. Listen carefully for this is the Word of the Living God. My soul longs for your salvation, I hope in your word. My eyes long for your promise. I ask, when will you comfort me? For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes. How long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me? The insolent have dug pitfalls for me. They do not live according to your law. All your commandments are sure. They persecute me with falsehood. Help me. They have almost made an end of me on earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts. In your steadfast love, give me life that I may keep the testimonies of your mouth. That's for the reading of God's word. I thank God for unvarnished, gritty, real-life prayers like this. This is what this is. This is an unvarnished, gritty, real, not fake, not happy-clappy, not cheesy, smiled prayer. It is a real contribution of a man of God, or a woman of God for that matter, lifting up to God their true feelings, their true emotions that we categorize under that title lament. The psalmist is lamenting here. And I think that this is where we sometimes find ourselves, and I think that because of the evangelical culture in which we live, we're embarrassed to actually say so. We're embarrassed to say that we doubt. We're embarrassed to say, God, what are you doing? We're embarrassed to say, how long, Lord, are you going to keep me here? When, Lord, are you going to show your salvation? How long are you going to let unjust men and women who dig pitfalls or traps for me? go on, because after all, you are a just God, are you not? You are a righteous God, are you not? And we come back to that age-old question that Habakkuk asks, you are of purer eyes than to behold evil, so as I look around, what gives? It's honest, and you know, I often in my evangelism will hear people say, well, I don't go to church because of hypocrites. And I think that that's a stupid excuse, it really is. But at the same time, I wonder if those who are being honest are talking about this type of thing where maybe they do see prayers like this in the Psalter, prayers like this in wisdom literature, and then they go to church and they don't see that fleshed out in the people of God. Or as God has given words and emotions to feelings like this, we don't take them up. And I think that we should take them up. And we've talked about that from time to time. But there's one word that's used in the Hebrew, if you care, it's the word kala. And it's an interesting word. It's used three times in this refrain. Of course, this is the cough stanza, and the word starts with cough, kala. But it's this idea of languishing, it's this idea of being brought to the end point, being brought to the brink, being brought to, you might even call it the breaking point, being brought to the end, that's what it is. And that's what's going on with the psalmist tonight. He is being brought to his wit's end, and by God's grace, even though it doesn't shine as brightly as the rest of his complaining, what we do see in it is that he's kept from going over the edge, and there's one thing, really, with a multitude of different words to describe it, that keeps him from going over the edge, and it is God's precepts, God's commandments, God's promises, and God's word. And really, that's it. We can give the benediction right now. That's basically what this is about. What keeps him from going over the edge when people are persecuting him? When people are taking his words, dousing them with gasoline, setting them on fire, people who are not seeking truth, people who are not seeking righteousness, they're just seeking to be right. And so they gaslight him, they cast him in an illicit light. Lord, why are you doing this? I'm being brought to an end. What's going to keep me from falling over the edge? He uses two words, yet and but. Yet and but. Yet I trust in your word. Yet I long for your salvation. Yet and but. They're beautiful, precious words that the Lord has given us. The psalm is about coming back from the breaking point rather than falling over the cliff. So I want to look at it in three turns here. Panic, persecution and perseverance or promise. Panic, persecution and And I'll look at panic and persecution together. I want you to look at four crippling examples of how the enemy, whoever it is, has sought to take him down. And I'm just going to kind of blast through these real quick. Four crippling examples. Number one, look in verse 84, he's facing persecution. And as we go through these, I want you to think about in your life ways that this is going on in your life, in your personal life. It doesn't have to be a physical enemy that's chasing you with an axe, okay, or a spear, all right, as maybe the psalmist was, I don't know. But it could be persecution of character. It could be gaslighting. It could be the things that many of us deal with on a daily and weekly basis. So number one, he's facing persecution. Look at verse 84. When will you judge those who persecute me? Another crippling example, verse 85, we see the arrogant seeking to trap him. This is the gaslighting I was talking about. The insolent, another word for the arrogant, have dug pitfalls for me. They do not live according to your law. They don't play by the rules, right? You're playing by the rules. You're playing by God's righteous standard as much as you can, but they're not. They have no qualms, no issues with breaking the rules in order to make themselves look good and throw you under the bus. In fact, in the way that the psalmist is panting after his salvation, they're panting after the opportunity to throw you under the bus. Gaslighting, people who are not seeking truth and righteousness. As I said, they take your words and they pour gasoline on them and they set them on fire. Look at the third one in verse 86. They smear his character. This is really a subset of the second one. Verse 86, they persecute me with falsehood. And finally, verse 87, enemies have almost worn down his resolve. They have almost made an end of me on the earth, verse 87. So we see, in the midst of this persecution, he then panics. Let me show you a few ways in which he's panicking. First, he wrestles with the question of God's timing. There's two ways in which he does this. Look at verses 81 and 82. My soul longs for your salvation, I hope in your word. My eyes long for your promise, I ask, when will you comfort me? Have you ever asked that question? When will you comfort me? God, I'm doing the right thing, when will you comfort me? But let me say this to you tonight, beloved. There is a good way to seek comfort and a bad way to seek comfort. Or another way to put it is, there's a bad comfort to seek and a good comfort to seek. And we need to be incredibly careful about this whole matter of comfort. What's bad comfort? Here's bad comfort. Here's a few examples, okay? I don't want friction. I don't want friction in my relationships. If I have to stand for truth and it's gonna bring friction, it's gonna rock the boat, I don't wanna do that. And we may even do it under the guise of wisdom. Well, I'm just trying to be wise. And sometimes that's the case. There's a time to speak and a time to stay silent, right? Ecclesiastes 3 says that. But more often than not, it's not the case that we're just taking the wise approach, it's the case that we're taking the cowardly approach. It's the case that we're saying, well, somebody needs to address that issue, but it's certainly not me. I don't want friction. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that gal. I want people to like me. But isn't it in friction that a sword is sharpened? Isn't it in friction that a sword is sharpened? It's in friction that we learn, listen, to prize the Lord more than any other thing or person. It is in friction that we learn and see what is truly in our hearts. Because when the heat is turned up, what's really there, whatever the default is, that's what's gonna come out, isn't it? What's another sort of comfort? I think this is where a lot of us live. A lot of us live in the fallacious law of reciprocation. the fallacious law of reciprocation. Let me give you one example from my counseling experience and then take it further. One of the things that I see not only in my life and my marriage, it's a temptation certainly and I've fallen into it on various occasions, but also in the people that I counsel is people are very happy to do what they're supposed to do in the marriage as long as their spouse is pulling his or her away, right? So, you know, I will love my wife in an understanding way as long as she's respecting me, as long as she's honoring me. But the moment she shows disrespect, all bets are off. I'm done. That is the fallacious law of reciprocation. There has to be reciprocation. There has to be tit for tat. If there's not tit for tat, then I'm not gonna do it. Well, here's the thing, and you're lying to yourself if you think that you've never done that, okay? We've all done it. Maybe some of us are even in a season of doing it. Maybe you did it in an argument on the way over here. I don't know. But if you're doing that, I want you to know that your motivation is not to honor the Lord in obedience at whatever cost. Your motivation is what do I get out of it? In other words, I'm coming back like a boomerang to comfort. See, I will be obedient if it's comfortable to me. I will be obedient if it's comfortable to me, if it meets my expectations. Well, in the same way that this is done at the level of the marriage, it's also done in our relationship with the Lord. Lord, I will be obedient to you if you make my life easy. We always throw the health, wealth, and prosperity preachers under the bus, and so we should, okay? But I wonder if we're not a little health, wealth, and prosperity preacher in our heart. We don't have one in our heart. Because yes, Lord, I will be obedient when it works out for me. Yes, Lord, I will be faithful when it works out for me. Beware of this fallacious law of reciprocation. So that's bad comfort, all right? And bad comfort often manifests itself in looking for reciprocal things in this temporal life. What is good comfort? Well, you can do no better than the Heidelberg question in answer one. I know I've quoted this before. It's a wonderful definition of comfort. What is your only comfort in life and death? Answer that I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own. There goes law of reciprocation. I'm not my own, but I belong unto my faithful savior, Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil and so preserves me, by the way, in no matter what comes. that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head, yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth to live unto him. Did you notice anything in there that was contingent upon worldly and temporal things? No, it was super worldly, meaning above worldly. In other words, it means that whatever the world and the flesh and the devil does bring, my anchor of assurance is the promises of the gospel. And they are assured to me daily, if I am listening, by the Holy Spirit of God, and they point to the focal point of Jesus Christ, his cleansing blood, his preserving providential care, so much so that not a hair of my head can fall apart from the will of my Father. That is a good comfort to seek. And that is the comfort that all of us should be seeking, and we should be spurning this fallacious law of reciprocation. But then another way he questions the timing of God is he says in verses 83 and 84, how long, how long? Verse 83, for I become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes. How long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me? This image of a wineskin in smoke is really lost on us because this isn't how we carry wine. I mean, if you're carrying around wine anyways, you have other issues. But in that day, of course, it was different. They did carry around wineskins. It was for sustenance. But this image of wineskin in the smoke is very vivid. You see the wineskin, which held their wine, when exposed to the smoke, it dries out. It becomes brittle. It becomes cracked. It becomes useless. And so we see the smoke of the trials is ruining this believer, at least potentially so. It's sapping away his vitality, it's sapping away his usefulness in life. That's the image that we see with the smoke sapping up, or I should say, drying up or cracking the wineskin. And this is the condition of the believer. So he says, how long? How much longer? Lord, if you keep me under this smoke, I don't know that I'm going to be able to hold your, if I can put it this way, the wine of your promises within me anymore. I'm going to lose them. I'm going to look for something else. Then he also wrestles with the unjust, law-defying, arrogant men in a world controlled by a just, righteous, and law-giving God. And we see that in 85 and 86. The insolent or the arrogant. Have dug pitfalls for me. They do not live according to your law. All your commandments are sure. They persecute me with falsehood. And then I love these two words, help me. I've prayed that prayer so many times. Have you? Lord, I just, I don't have, help me, just help me. Show me what I need and then give me the grace and the grit to pray for that thing. Help me, help me, help me. It's sad when we can't even utter those two words, right? We're just so disillusioned, we're so downtrodden that we can't even say that. But that's why we have that great promise in Romans 8, that the Lord, through the Spirit, He takes up our nonsensical emotions even, and nonsensical words even, and the Spirit interprets them. So then, with all this persecution, with all this doubting, with all this questioning of timing, how does he respond? Well, you could say it in two ways, perseverance and promise. Perseverance and promise. Look at verses 81 and 82. My soul longs for your salvation. I hope in your word. My eyes long for your promise. I ask, when will you comfort me? So his soul is spent regarding God's salvation. He wants, listen, he wants redemption. He wants it more than his pride. He wants it more than people having a high view of himself. He wants sanctification. He wants the end to all the ways in which sin have wreaked havoc on this world, on his life, and on his family's life. He wants to behold the full package of salvation. And this is what the redeemed want. They want complete salvation more than the vices here on earth. They want complete salvation more than the vices here on earth. I want you to see something finally here tonight. What is your default? What is your default when you, like the psalmist, are in this situation? You're getting pressed, the smoke is drying up and cracking and making brittle your wine skin of your soul, if you wanna put it that way. What is your default? Because your default tells you much about the condition of your heart. I'm gonna give you two defaults that often appear in our lives. Number one, the sinful, untrusting default. The sinful, untrusting default. You might say dealing with messy relationships, dealing with wayward children, dealing with wayward family members, friends, church members, it's all difficult. It's heart-wrenching, it's stomach-churning business. And so it's just easy to say as the default, you know what? This is too much drama for me. It's just too much. I'm just gonna leave it alone. I'm gonna avoid it. I won't address the person. I'll avoid the person who's trying to call me out on my sin. I'll avoid any drama because after all, God wants me to be happy, right? If you can't beat him, join him. If you can't beat him, join him. The arrogant attack me? Well, two can play at that game. I'll show them really how to attack somebody's character. If you can't beat him, join him. If that's how we respond, what it should show us more than anything else that we're clinging to earthly resolutions rather than heavenly resolutions. We're clinging to earthly answers rather than God's word, which is what the children of God cling to, no matter what they see, no matter what they feel, they cling to it. They may not even have a coherent, logical answer as to why, but they cling to it. And that's the second default, the default of those who live by faith and not by sight. So just listen to this. How does he pray? I long for your salvation. I hope in your word. My eyes long for your promises. I've become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes. You see that contrast there? I've become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes. Verse 86, we see a desperate throwing of ourselves upon the truth and certainty of God's commandments. All your commandments are sure. They persecute me with falsehood. Help me. They have almost made an end of me on the earth. I have not forsaken your precepts. Beloved, I pray that that's where the Lord keeps us tonight, this week, and for the rest of our lives, that despite what we see, especially despite what we feel, When we feel like throwing in the towel, we say, I have not forgotten your precepts. And even though it's not comfortable for me, even though in the moment it doesn't scratch my worldly conceptions of comfort, I will have the resolve to seek after the kind of comfort that the catechist seeks after. In Heidelberg one, my only comfort in life and death is that I belong to my Savior, Jesus Christ. And if you think, beloved, that that is weird, if you think that it's weird, like if you hear me saying like, look, instead of running from the drama, instead of running from the problems, like join the fray, okay, you just remember this one thing. How does Isaiah describe our Lord? He was a man of sorrows. He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. Remember that Isaiah called him that, and you want to know why? Because Jesus was constantly in the business of calling out sin and entering into the struggle and battle for people's souls. I'd be lying to you if I stood up here tonight and said, I never get weary of fighting for the souls of people, because trust me, beloved, I do. Every once in a blue moon, I'm just like, oh, what if I were driving that UPS truck right now? Just delivering packages. Packages don't talk back. Packages don't tell you one thing and do the other thing. They're just simple, inanimate objects. It's not often because you guys are good people, but we're also sinners and it's not just when I deal with The battles for souls here in this place, but it's when I look in the mirror in the morning and I'm battling for my own soul. So don't count it strange. Listen, let me end with this. Don't count it strange if you experience what Jesus experienced. Persecution, and instead of your default being, I'm just gonna, if you can't beat them, join them. I'm gonna do what the world does. You enter into the fray. Because listen to what the author to Hebrews says about Jesus in Hebrews 5, seven through 10. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Now, I'm not even gonna begin tonight to try to wrap my mind around what it means when it says that Jesus learned obedience. I don't know what that means, okay? I can tell you more what it doesn't mean than what it does mean, okay? But I will just put the magnifying glass on the adverbial way in which he learned obedience. What is it? Through what he suffered. You wanna learn obedience? You wanna learn to be more faithful to your God? You wanna learn to say, come hell or high water, I'm clinging to the promises. I don't care what happens, I'm gonna cling to the promises. Like Athanasius, though it'd be me against the world. I'm gonna stand here and I'm not gonna move. Then you have to learn it through suffering. You have to learn it through suffering. So when the suffering appears in God's providential timing, don't run from it, beloved, embrace it. Join the fray, jump into it, and be hopeful that the Lord will teach you obedience through suffering. And when you've done that, you could be reminded once again that the Spirit of God lives in you and that your life looks something like Jesus Christ. And then when you look at the rest of your life and see where it doesn't look like Jesus Christ, say, bless God that we have a Savior that covers my sins. Let's pray. Father God, help us to pray this prayer of the psalmist. Even tonight, Father, I pray that we can, and I thank you that this congregation over the years has just become more and more real. I'm not saying they weren't real before.