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.
THE REALITY OF OUR DISTRESS
The godly are subject to all the miseries which are inevitable because we no longer dwell in the perfect paradise of our first parents. The divine curse has justly introduced misery throughout the whole created order on account of the primeval rebellion. Christians get cancer just like everyone else and are just as likely to die from it. When a flood comes, believers are swept away just as surely as the wicked submerged in the raging waters. Faith grants no exemption whatsoever from hunger, thirst, and destitution.
On the contrary, following Jesus with all your heart will introduce special miseries reserved for God’s favorites. God has only had one Son without sin but none without suffering. Our Lord came into this world and experienced not only hunger and thirst but humiliation and rejection of such a kind and degree absolutely unique in human history to fulfill the divine mission as the Savior of his people.
And yet the crucified One calls us to follow in his steps, and to fellowship with him in his sufferings. As the world disbelieved him, so they will disbelieve us when we receive and proclaim his message. Since they hated him, they will hate us too if we belong to him, for the servant is not greater than his lord. All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution (2 Tim 3.12). And many of these godly ones will die young of leukemia, besides their religious sufferings.
The psalmist testifies candidly and without shame about his misery in this world. “Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me” is strong language indeed. Trouble may allude to the bad circumstances, while anguish is clearly a state of mind characterized by extreme pain, distress, and anxiety. These are good terms to translate the original Hebrew words, both of which have connotations of being in dire straits. The literal sense is to be constricted in a very narrow space, and no one finds that comfortable. The Authorized Version’s verbal phrase, “have taken hold on me,” impresses us with the psalmist’s feeling of helplessness in all this. The ESV’s “have found me out” is a more strict rendering of the Hebrew. Trouble and anxiety pursue us and inevitably catch up with us, and there is nothing we can do about it. No resolutions to be and stay happy can give them the slip. New converts still in the fresh bloom of exuberant joy and doubting this will discover it in their own experience soon enough.
If you don’t understand this dark side of being a real Christian, you can become depressed about being depressed, even more troubled that you are troubled, and suffer heightened anxiety that you should feel anxious. Sometimes sincere Christians have genuinely believed, deep down, that passing through such valleys in the shadow of death are telltale signs of their lacking real faith, or at least that their faith is very weak. This increases needlessly the oppression of spirit they are already suffering. Our Lord Jesus himself had plenty of cause to lament with these words in his earthly pilgrimage: “Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me,” and shall we escape such pain?
Unbelievers sometimes come to utter despair with their lighter load, but Scripture testifies that the righteous, while admittedly sinking sometimes very low beneath their heavier burdens of suffering, never wholly relinquish their faith, nor are completely without joy and hope. What accounts for this? What is the difference in real Christians that causes us to prove more than conquerors in tribulation and distress and persecution and famine and nakedness and peril and sword (Rom 8.35 ff.)? How can we have delight in distress, and what is our delight then?
THE RESOURCE OF OUR DELIGHT
“Yet thy commandments are my delights.” The distress is real distress, and there is no delight in the distress per se, but rather in the midst of distress.
Too many people view the matter of suffering very simplistically. They think one must be happy or sad, but surely not both simultaneously, or else they would cancel each other and you would be simply dispassionate. Indeed, the one who is both elated and depressed is liable to a diagnosis of mental illness.
Biblical psychology reveals that a healthy soul that can soar while it sinks. We sorrow but not as others who have no hope (1 Thess 4.13). Hear the testimony of Paul, full of God’s Spirit:
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed [“crushed,” ESV]; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh (2 Cor 4.8-10).
Paul was not psychotic but sound in the faith. He was experiencing the saint’s delight in the midst of distress, and this is what emboldened him from day to day to carry on his ministry that necessarily involved for him, God’s chosen vessel, great suffering for the sake of the Lord’s name (Acts 9.15-16).
The Scriptures were both the foundation and occasion of these solid joys. In keeping with Psalm 119’s theme, the psalmist brings this out explicitly. Lord, thy commandments are my delights! Who would have imagined it could be so? The ungodly find God’s commandments burdensome, but the righteous love them more than gold and relish them more than honey.
True Christians love every word that drops from the lips of our most beloved One, just because they are his. We love him supremely, and every disclosure of his mind by the divine words is a revelation of his person to us. We yearn to know him as he is in truth, and to be delivered from our faulty preconceived notions or popular imaginations about him. We discover by God’s Word that he is more wonderful than our hearts can conceive, more glorious that we can fully appreciate. His ways are infinitely wise and pure and excellent. His instructions to us are the paths of life and highest happiness; in keeping them there is great reward.
When afflicted in this world, the Scriptures are a welcome retreat for our souls. Whatever is wrong and filthy and oppressive and painful, we come to the Word and bathe again in its truth and solace and nobility and righteousness. Do our enemies revile us? Our heavenly Father speaks so very tenderly to us, and assures us of our adoption in Christ. Are we in the midst of any calamity? The promises of God cheer us with news that trouble is only temporary and his instrument for our greater sanctification and ultimate blessing. Are we feeling profoundly lonely? We learn from the Bible that God’s Spirit dwells in us, and that he always has a remnant of many thousands of our brethren in this world that have not bowed the knee to false gods. Even when we have sinned, we know from these sacred verses that he does not impute the guilt of our sins to us for whom Christ already suffered, and he bears with us patiently until our renewed repentance and fresh commitment to obedience.
Oh, my fellow Christian, praise the Lord with me! Though we must pass through a vale of tears, we can know the joy of the Lord in it, and this will be our strength, equal to every trial (Neh 8.10). Truly we are all Ashers, and “as thy days, so shall thy strength be” (Deut 33.25).
Therefore, always remember to resort to your delight in distress, even God’s holy Word. Amen.