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Gospel Consolation (Psa 119.76)

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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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God Has Been More Than Fair With Me (Psa 119.75)

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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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The Joy of Christian Fellowship (Psa 119.74)

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They that fear thee will be glad when they see me;
Because I have hoped in thy word (Psa 119.74).

As a human being, you were made for gladness. It does not matter if you are not “the emotional type,” or if your soul is now so numbed by sin and suffering that you wonder whether you could ever feel anything again.

You were made in God’s image and he is an emotive Being. Yes, as God he is above merely human passions,1 but our feelings at their best have a divine counterpart in his glorious nature. He truly rejoices in his beloved people. “The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy” (Psa 147.11). “They that are of a froward [crooked, perverse] heart are abomination to the LORD: but such as are upright in their way are his delight” (Prov 11.20). When the Lord completely finishes redeeming his elect, he will even sing over them with joy (Zeph 3.17)! Calvin’s comments on this text are valuable. He guards our sense of God’s transcendence while at the same time forcefully proclaiming the truth that God is toward his people like a husband burning with love toward his wife and celebrating their love.
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My Creator’s Wisdom (Psa 119.73)

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Thy hands have made me and fashioned me:
Give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments (Psa 119.73).

Wisdom is our greatest need, and wise is the man who knows the spring of wisdom and how to tap into it. Wise men like the psalmist know this. “Wisdom must be from God, because it can be found only in relation to Him” (Edmund P. Clowney). “Wisdom and the will of God are intimately related . . . Nothing is more vital for practical knowledge of the purpose of God than wisdom” (Sinclair Ferguson). “If you lack knowledge, go to school. If you lack wisdom, get on your knees! Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is the proper use of knowledge” (Vance Havner)1. Even as James wrote by the infallible Spirit, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (Jas 1.5).
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More Desirable than Gold (Psa 119.72)

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The law of thy mouth is better unto me
Than thousands of gold and silver (Psa 119.72).

If we really believed them, the letters we receive announcing that we have won a fortune would get our attention, but we have learned from experience about the fine print. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?

CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU HAVE WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS
if you enter our drawing and are one of our lucky winners
(odds of winning: 1 in 100,000,000)

Our culture celebrates the god Mammon. People devote their lives to its service and will sacrifice anything for it, and so the promise of easy money is a great temptation for many.
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Kissing the Rod (Psa 119.71)

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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

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The Heart of the Matter (Psa 119.70)

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Their heart is as fat as grease;
But I delight in thy law (Psa 119.70).

Sincerity is not everything, but everything else without sincerity is nothing. Sincere adherents to false religions are abominable to God, and their earnestness in opposition to Him and His truth only increases their guilt. Conversely, one may say and do all the right things externally—profess Christ, be baptized, adhere strongly to the most orthodox confession of faith, serve as a church officer and volunteer for scads of worthy causes—and yet fail of God’s approval.
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Overcoming the Slanderers (Psa 119.69)

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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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Aspiring to Goodness, (Psa 119:68)

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Thou art good, and doest good;
Teach me thy statutes (Psa 119.68).

From our youngest days, we were exhorted to “be good,” and if we wanted to please our parents, we were motivated at least to try. We discovered by experience that being good wasn’t easy, and some of us became frustrated. Then we rationalized that being good is for little kids. Teenagers typically want to be cool, independent, or rebellious—anything but good! And too many adults never return to their earlier aspirations for goodness.
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My Chastened Soul

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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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