“Affliction Is Good?” – FBC Morning Light (9/24/2024)

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. Hope your week got off to a good start.

Yesterday, and today as we look at our Bible reading, we're reading the first half of the 119th Psalm. So this is a very rare occurrence when, in our Scripture reading plan, we read less than a chapter.

Well, this one chapter, if you will, this one Psalm, is 176 verses, so we're dividing that in two. Today we're reading verses 1 through 88, and then tomorrow, verses 89 to 176. I want to focus on a couple of verses in the Teth section of the Psalm.

Now remember, Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm. There are 22 sections, and each section is 8 verses long, and they all begin, each section begins with a letter of the alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet. And in verses 65 to 72, the Hebrew letter is the word, the letter Teth, comparable to our T, I suppose, at least in terms of its sound.

Well anyway, a couple of verses here. Verse 67 says, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. And then verse 71, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes.

So a couple things about those two verses. One is the reality of affliction in the life of a believer. The psalmist, when he wrote this, was reflecting back on a time of affliction that he endured, and he's come out of it, and now he has some insight into the value and the role that affliction played in his life.

We don't know what the affliction was. There are all kinds of ways that we are afflicted, aren't there? When I think of my current prayer list, for example, I know people who are afflicted physically, they are experiencing some real physical challenges.

There's some cancer situations, there's some who are going through a temporary period of infection that's pretty serious, so there's physical afflictions. I know other people who struggle with some emotional afflictions.

They battle with loneliness and some things related to that, so there are those kinds of afflictions. And then there are spiritual afflictions that we face from time to time, aren't there? When we just feel like it seems that nothing is really happening in our spiritual life, we don't sense we're growing, we don't sense an intimacy with the Lord, and there's an affliction, a spiritual affliction that comes at times like that.

Well, what are those times for? One of the things is that those afflictions can be somewhat punitive, if you will. So verse 67, before I was afflicted, I went astray. The psalmist is indicating that the affliction served to bring him back in a right relationship with the Lord and on the right path.

He says, now I keep your word. So the affliction has the dual effect of confronting you in your straying, bringing you back to the right path, and then motivating you, challenging you to stay on that path.

Because after all, if you went astray and were afflicted because of that straying, then you really don't want to go astray again, right? Oh, then in verse 71, being able to back on the affliction, he can see the value of it.

He says, it was good for me that I have been afflicted. Now, we don't always have that perspective when we're going through the season of affliction, do we? That this is good for me? But oftentimes, we can look back on a time of affliction, and we can appreciate what the Lord taught us in that time, maybe how he redirected our focus, our attention, even our behavior, and we see the value in what has happened, what we went through.

And so we can say with the psalmist, it is good for me that I have been afflicted. And then he explains why. He says that I may learn your statutes. You know, it's true, isn't it, that there are some things that we learn in the valley that we don't learn on the mountaintop, things we learn in times of affliction.

The Lord teaches us that we just wouldn't recognize when everything's going fine, everything's going well. And so the psalmist can say, affliction taught me some things, and I'm glad for it. I'm glad for what I've learned.

How about you? Can you remember times, maybe not so long ago, when the Lord brought you through a time of affliction, and it was not pleasant, but as you look back on it now, you can see the value of it.

Perhaps it brought you back on the right path. Perhaps through that time of affliction, you learned some things. Whatever the case, now you can say, ah, you know what? It was good for me. It was good for me.

Well, let's thank the Lord. Father, we do thank you that we can have such a perspective on affliction, and I pray that we would not chafe under it, but seek to learn that which you have for us through the affliction, we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Tuesday. May the Lord bless you in it. Good day.