Consider mine affliction, and deliver me:
For I do not forget thy law (Psa 119.153).
English is a dynamic language. Useful words sometimes become corrupted by popular usage. When biblical terms are at stake, we should be jealous for their proper sense and clarify their meaning to our hearers.
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Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me:
Yet thy commandments are my delights.
Everyone suffers in this world, even those nearest to God. At first this seems an amazing thing since all suffering is the outworking of Providence. We might think that the Lord would give his people an easier path on the way to heaven. But more stunning still is the truth that those nearest to God do especially suffer, more than the unconverted, at least in some respects.
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I am afflicted very much:
Quicken me, O LORD, according to thy word (Psa 119.107).
Suffering is inevitable in this fallen world, and saints can expect to have the worst of it because while we are not exempted from the common miseries of mankind, to these are added special trials peculiar to God’s favorites. Those counselors exhibit colossal naïvete who imply that strong faith brings immunity from ocean-depths of inner anguish and sorrow. The Savior himself said prophetically, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger” (Lam 1.12), and no one had greater faith than he.
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How many are the days of thy servant?
When wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me?
Saul the Pharisee was a persecutor of the early Christians until he met the risen Lord on the road to Damascus. Describing himself since that day of his conversion, Paul wrote to Timothy:
But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
Mine eyes fail for thy word,
Saying, When wilt thou comfort me? (Psa 119.82)
Triumphalism, that unrealistic expectation of enjoying in this life nearly all of the blessings, whether physical or spiritual, of the age to come, threatens the well-being of sensitive Christians because it only deepens their dejection. That crucible of unfulfilled desires, whether holy or natural, instead of being accepted as the normal lot of God’s beloved people, is interpreted rather by triumphalists as a sure sign of exclusion from his favor, and this only increases the miseries suffered by the poor Christian.
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Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort,
According to thy word unto thy servant (Psa 119.76).
Moved by the Holy Spirit, the psalmist here prays earnestly for comfort. “I pray thee” is emphatic expression, like, “Please! I beg you!” with a focus on the desire of the speaker, used to heighten a sense of urgency.1 If we generally despise such pleas, we exhibit the ungodly trait of pride2 and influence of Stoicism.3 The more our true humanity is restored, the more we will be sensitive to the importance of right feeling and of our need to look above for deepest consolation.
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I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right,
And that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me (Psa 119.75).
Many unbelievers implicitly acknowledge God’s control over all things, including their personal catastrophes, and then hold a grudge against him. Perhaps when a loved one was dying of cancer, the person now spiritually-disgruntled had prayed earnestly for healing. “Oh, God, please don’t let her die,” the father pleaded for his sick daughter. And then she not only died, but suffered grievously for six months in the process! And God made this happen to her when she was only four years old—an innocent little girl who did not even know what was happening to her and suffered it all without complaining. Now the father hates God and feels completely justified.
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It is good for me that I have been afflicted;
That I might learn thy statutes (Psa 119.71).
“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” is the attention-grabbing title of a book by Robert Fulghum from the eighties. What did he have in mind? Simple duties like this: share everything, play fair, don’t hit people, put things back where you found them, clean up your own mess, don’t take things that aren’t yours, say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody, etc. He wrote,
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm.1
The proud have forged a lie against me:
But I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart (Psa 119.69).
God’s kingdom triumphs on a battlefield of hostile forces. The ancient contest appears in each generation among men, and in each man’s soul. Not until the end of this age and the arrival of the new heavens and the new earth will all the saints be able to love God and one another unhindered by remaining sin and unmolested by Satan’s minions. For now, as the old saying goes, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
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Before I was afflicted I went astray:
But now have I kept thy word (Psa 119.67).
Before God, the church, and the world, this is the psalmists’ testimony of his growth in grace and a painful means by which it came. He measured his spirituality by the rule of Scripture. “I had departed from Scripture and now I have returned to keep it.” You are no closer to God than you are to His Word—not only in a knowledge of it, but also in the love of it—and all those who love His commandments consistently put them into practice. The more love to His law, the more consistency in obedience to it.
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