Why God is Good When He Brings Affliction
Psalm 119:65-72
When everything in your life is going great, it’s easy to believe God is good. It’s easy to see God’s goodness when you get the promotion, when your health is great, or when your children are thriving.
But what about when everything is not going so well? What about when you lose your job, or you’ve just had a terrible day with your children, or are diagnosed with cancer? What do we believe about God then?
Some of you are asking that question right now. And every follower of Jesus will ask that question. And this is the question the psalmist answers in Psalm 119:65-72. So let’s turn there together. If you need a Bible, go ahead and raise your hand and we will bring one to you. Psalm 119 is on page 513 in the Bibles we are passing out.
In vv.65-72 he helps us understand how we can believe that God is good, when God allows us to experience afflictions. Look at what he says --
65 You have dealt well with your servant, O LORD, according to your word.
66 Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.
68 You are good and do good; teach me your statutes.
69 The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts;
70 their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law.
71 It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
72 The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
To understand what the author is saying, let’s start by asking -- What trials has the author been facing?
Notice that in v.67 he says he has been afflicted –
67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.
And he uses that same word in v.71 --
71 It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
So the author has been afflicted. But how?
He tells us in vv.69-70 --
69 The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts;
70 their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law.
He was being afflicted by some insolent people. “Insolent” means they don’t care about right or wrong, they have no moral sensitivity, they have no conscience. Like he says – their heart is unfeeling like fat.
And these insolent people have smeared him with lies. It’s like he has been standing in public view in clean clothes -- but these people scooped up mud and smeared it all over him – so now everyone is seeing him as filthy and dirty.
Imagine that happening to you. Maybe at work your team released a product which ended up having a massive bug. And someone on your team has it out for you, and tells everyone that you wrote the code with the bug in it. He’s smeared you with lies – you wrote bad code, you didn’t check your work, you are incompetent.
Or maybe a mom at your child’s school is jealous of you, so she tells other moms that you are insecure and selfish and that you spoil your child. She’s smeared you with lies.
Can you feel how painful that would be? That’s the affliction this author is going through. And he knows that God is sovereign over everything. He knows God could have kept that smearing from happening. So –
How does he describe God’s action of bringing him these trials? Does he think God has stopped loving him? Does he question whether God is good? Is he angry against God?
- Look at what he says in v.65 –
65 You have dealt well with your servant, O LORD, according to your word.
- He says that God has dealt well with him – that God has been good to him, and notice that last line -- “according to your word.”
He had read the first five books of the Old Testament. He knew that God promised to do only good to his people.
- He had read God’s promise to Jacob in Genesis 32:12 – “I will surely do you good”
- He had read what Joseph said about his being sold into slavery in Genesis 50:20 – that God “meant it for good
- He had read what Moses said to his father-in-law in Numbers 10:29 – that “God has promised good to Israel.”
The author knew what God has promised in his word. And the author thinks about the afflictions God has allowed to come to him, and he says “You have dealt well with your servant according to your word.”
See, it’s not that our lives have good parts, and bad parts, and we think God brought the good parts, but that the bad parts are just, well, bad luck, or being in a fallen world, or the way the cookie crumbles.
- It’s that even the bad things in our lives are controlled by God, and are part of God’s goodness. But how can that be?
So how can afflictions be part of God’s goodness? In these verses the author gives two answers.
One is because God used afflictions to bring him back to the word. You can see that in v.67 --
67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.
We don’t know how the author had gone astray. But there was some area in his life in which he had turned from God’s Word. Maybe he was not serving his wife. Or maybe he was loving money. Or something else. We don’t know. But in some area of his life he had gone astray from God’s Word.
So God allowed this affliction to come upon him, God allowed these insolent men to smear him with lies. And this affliction humbled him before God, and softened his heart before God, so he saw that he had been turning astray from God’s Word, and he turned back.
So God used afflictions to bring him back to the word.
William Carey experienced the same thing. He was a missionary to India in the early 1800’s. He was specially gifted in languages, and had worked for years to translate the Bible into the languages of India. He had completed a rough draft of a dictionary which gave the equivalent of each Sanskrit word in every language in Asia. He had written the first grammar books for the Sikh and Telugu languages.
But one night when William Carey was away on missionary business, a fire broke out which destroyed the only copies of all of this work. Years of work – gone.
Here’s what he said about this –
In one short evening the labours of years are consumed. How unsearchable are the ways of God! I had lately brought some things to the utmost perfection of which they seemed capable, and contemplated the missionary establishment with perhaps too much self-congratulation. The Lord has laid me low, that I may look more simply to him. (Mary Drewery, William Carey: A Biography, p.154)
This does not mean that every time a trial comes it’s because we’ve turned astray. But sometimes this is the reason – and God will make it clear to us when it is. And it’s God’s great goodness that he brings us trials to humble us, to wake us up, to turn our hearts back to God and his Word.
That’s what the psalmist had experienced. He had turned astray from God’s Word – which means he no longer walking in God’s ways, he was no longer experiencing sweet fellowship with God, he was no longer in communion with God. And in great love and goodness God had brought affliction upon him to humble him, to wake him up, to turn his heart back to God.
And the reason this is good of God is because what life is all about is sweet fellowship with God. If you miss sweet fellowship with God, you are missing everything that matters. So because being smeared with lies by insolent men brought him back to sweet fellowship with God – he says God was good in doing this to him.
That does not make trials easy. But it helps us see that God is good, and loving, when he brings us trials.
But like I said, this is not always why God brings trials. The author mentions another reason why God brought him afflictions -- God used afflictions to teach him God’s Word. You can see that in v.71 --
71 It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
Sometimes afflictions bring us back TO God’s Word; other times they teach us the meaning OF God’s Word. So how do afflictions teach us the meaning of God’s Word? Can’t we just pray, open up God’s Word, and start reading?
Yes, we can. But that’s not enough. To really learn this book, we also need afflictions, because afflictions make us hungry for God’s Word, they humble our souls to receive God’s Word, they soften our hearts so we experience God’s Word.
This was powerfully experienced by Martin Luther. Martin Luther was one of the main leaders of the Reformation in the 1500’s, which helped the church rediscover the good news that we are saved by faith alone in Christ alone. And in one of John Piper’s books he talks about how Martin Luther had three principles, three rules for studying the Bible. Here’s what Luther said –
I want you to know how to study theology in the right way. I have practiced this method myself … Here you will find three rules. They are frequently proposed throughout Psalm [119] and run thus: Oratio [Latin for “prayer”], meditatio {Latin for “meditation”], and tentatio [Latin for “tribulation”].
And why are these rules so important? He goes on --
[These rules] teach you not only to know and understand, but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s word is: it is wisdom supreme.
This will happen if we pray, and meditate, and experience tribulation. But he said that tribulation was the touchstone of all these. So why was tribulation so important? Here’s how he explained it --
As soon as God’s Word becomes known through you, the devil will afflict you, will make a real theologian of you, and will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God’s Word. For I myself … I owe my Catholic opponents many thanks for so beating, pressing, and frightening me through the devil’s raging that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to a goal I should never have reached. (John Piper, The Legacy of Sovereign Joy, pp.103f).
See, trials are hard. Trials are painful. Trials hurt. But they can drive us to the Word with more passion, more desperation, more neediness. And when we open the Word with passion, desperation, and neediness – God will meet us more powerfully than if we are just casually reading. And when God meets us powerfully in his Word we will experience the things the Bible talks about.
We won’t just read about, but we will experience --
- the peace that surpasses comprehension
- rivers of living water
- the God of all comfort
- the love of God poured into our hearts
- the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits
- and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.
We will experience these things, and that will help us understand them better than if we just read about them.
So that’s how afflictions are part of God’s goodness. It’s because God uses afflictions to bring us back to God’s Word, and because God uses afflictions to teach us God’s Word.
But we need to raise one last question – what’s so good about being brought back to God’s Word, and about being taught God’s Word? What’s so good about God’s Word? Is being brought back to God’s Word, and learning God’s Word, really worth the afflictions and trials we face?
The psalmist thought so. Look at what he says in v.72 –
72 The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
No way. Thousands of gold and silver pieces? A thousand one-ounce gold pieces would be over a million dollars. So thousands of gold and silver pieces would be millions of dollars.
So picture a pile of gold and silver pieces over here – and the Word of God over here. The Word of God is better to him.
Why? It’s because it’s through God’s Word that we have our closest and sweetest communion with God. It’s through God’s Word that we see and feel the truth of Jesus Christ -- his life, death, resurrection, forgiveness, reconciliation, justification. It’s through God’s Word that we learn about and experience God’s grace, love, comfort, peace, strength, hope.
That’s why no matter what affliction God brings to us, he is perfectly loving and good. Because God’s purpose is either to bring us back to God’s Word, or teach us more of God’s Word. And when we come back to God’s Word and are taught more of God’s Word – what we get is more of God.
But it’s not enough to believe this. The psalmist wants us to experience this. So whenever you go through afflictions open up God’s Word and pray, and meditate, and believe and worship. Because as you do so, you will experience God in his Word. And he is worth it all.