The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): We've all heard the atheists' familiar rebuttal to Christianity. If God is so good, why does He allow suffering in the world? It's a notion based on the premise that if there was no suffering, people would be happy and the world would be a much better place.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. A world without suffering sounds logical to the unbeliever, but as Christians, we should be aware that there are multiple causes for our suffering and that God has a variety of purposes for our trials and tribulations, not the least of which is to bring Him glory. Let's join Dr. Boice as he continues his study of Psalm 119 and considers the five ways the Bible addresses suffering and what the Psalmist learned from being in God's school of affliction.

Dr. James Boice: Most people, not just Christians, have heard that tired atheistic rebuttal of Christianity that's based on the existence of suffering in the world. It takes different forms depending on the point of view of the one who speaks it, but one form of it would go like this: if God were good, He would wish all of His creatures to be happy; if He were almighty, He would be able to do what He wished; but His creatures are not happy; therefore, God lacks either goodness or power or both.

I say that's a tired objection because it's insulting in its superficiality. It suggests that the ultimate good in all the world is that people be happy, that we lack suffering, and it suggests that the only possible factors involved in the problem are the alleged benevolence and the alleged omnipotence of God. Suffering is a far more complex thing than that, and most Christians at least, and sometimes even many non-Christians, know that's the case.

The problem of pain is still a great problem, not only in an intellectual sense, but in a very personal way because everybody sooner or later suffers something and some people suffer a great deal. The Psalmist seems to have been one of those that suffered a lot. We've already talked about that briefly because early on in our study of this great 119th Psalm, we came to several stanzas in which he talks about his trials. On that occasion, I just scanned some of the things that were said throughout the Psalm about his sufferings.

We come to a particular emphasis upon that now because here he's talking about his afflictions, which seems to be a word that he's using in a much broader way. This is the new word here in these three stanzas, verses 65 to 88. You find it twice in stanza nine, in verses 67 and 71. You find it a third time in stanza 10, the second in the sequence, verse 75. And although it doesn't occur in the last of these three stanzas, this stanza describes the poet's affliction in the most serious and saddest words of all.

So, this is a good time to talk about affliction, suffering, the kind of things that come into our lives all the time. And if we put them together, what we find here is a rather comprehensive treatment. We're taught, first of all, about the purpose of God in afflictions; and secondly, the source of these afflictions; and third, the end result of them for every Christian. More or less, that's the outline we're going to follow.

Now we talk about the purpose, and that's the big question. Why do the righteous suffer? What's the purpose of suffering in their lives? When we look at the Bible as a whole, we find not a simple answer to this, but actually a rather complex one for the various and obvious reason that suffering and pain is not a simple problem.

First of all, some suffering is simply the common lot of man. You don't have to read a whole lot into it. We live in an imperfect world. Bad things happen. Children fall down and scrape their knees. You don't have to say there's a great cosmic purpose in that. Job was one who suffered greatly and for other reasons, but he gave testimony to it when he said in one of his discourses, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." It was a way of saying it's just the nature of the thing. The world's imperfect. Some suffering is common.

Secondly, there's suffering that's corrective, and that's the one that the Psalmist is particularly talking about. It's the one we're going to come back to. Verse 67 says, "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your word." So, what he's confessing is that the afflictions he endured were sent to him by God to get him back onto the path of obedience.

Third, some suffering is constructive. That is, it's used by God to sharpen our skills and develop our character. The Apostle Paul writes about that in Romans 5. I'm sure you know that passage. Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. There are a number of qualities that should be present in every Christian, but the way they come is by suffering.

Somebody once said to a preacher, "You know, I'm so indecisive in things. I just wish I could develop character and be able to persevere. Would you pray that God would do that in my life?" And the preacher said, "I'll pray right now. Oh Lord, send suffering into this person's life." They said, "Stop! I didn't say suffering. I was talking about other things." But he was referring to this passage. It's by that kind of thing that God develops character.

The fourth purpose of suffering, and I wish I could do this with the letter C because all the others have C, but I can't, is that God might be glorified by it. And the example I have there is Jesus' words about the man who had been born blind. Remember how the disciples approached that? The disciples said to Jesus when they saw that man, "Now let's have a discussion about the purpose of suffering in the world. It's obviously linked to sin. We know that much. So, who sinned? Was it this man or his parents that he was born blind?"

I don't know how, having been born blind, he could have been responsible for his own blindness by his sin, but that was the question they were asking. And Jesus' reply was very perceptive and deep. He said in this case at least, neither this man nor his parents, but he was born blind in order that the glory of God might be revealed. It was a way of saying that he was blind so that at that moment in the ministry of Jesus Christ, Jesus could come along and heal him and bring glory to God. It's a hard thing for many of us to accept, but that's what Jesus said.

And then there's a fifth purpose in suffering, which is cosmic. We get back to the C again. Job is the best example here because the whole setting for that book is a cosmic setting. You begin with a scene in heaven. Satan is accusing Job. He's saying, "This man only serves You because You take care of him." And so, God allows suffering to come into Job's life, very, very great suffering, to show that that isn't true. That a person will love God for who God is regardless of how favorably God treats them. And you and I often have an opportunity to do that as well.

That's the background. What the Psalmist is talking about here, especially in these three stanzas, is the second of the five uses of affliction. He says that God sent affliction into his life as a divine corrective to direct him back into the right paths so he might know and obey God's word.

Now, as he explores that, which is what he does, he does it in two parts. And that corresponds to the two uses of the word affliction in the stanza. First of all, he says that God taught him obedience by his affliction. That's a verse I mentioned a moment ago, verse 67. "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your word."

The Hebrew of that particular verse is not saying that he had plunged into particularly heinous sins and that God somehow had punished him for it and got him back on the right path. The word astray really has to do with wandering from the path largely because of ignorance. He does say in other places that he sinned, but what he's saying here is that I just didn't know what I was doing. I was just like most of the people in the world. I had no idea of God's will or God's ways. I was wandering out there, and God allowed the fruit of my particular way of conduct to come home to me in suffering so that I might learn that that way really didn't work and might come to Your word and actually find the way in which I should go.

You see, that is quite a different thing. It has to do with instruction. It's related to this that the Bible says even of Jesus in the book of Hebrews that although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered. It's as we go through experience that we learn the truthfulness and reliability of God's word.

Then the second thing that he says God did with him through the sufferings was give him a greater understanding of God's ways. That's a second use of the word affliction. You find it in verse 71. "It was good for me to be afflicted so I might learn from your decrees." Now we might think that the order there is reversed. Obedience and then learning God's decrees, we might say, "Well, first you have to learn what they are in order that you might obey them." That is true, of course, but it's not what he's saying here.

Of course, he knew the word of God enough to obey it, and that's what he says first. But he says, "As I obeyed it, as I walked in God's way, God continuing to send afflictions into my life because the Christian life is never easy, gave me greater and greater understanding of that which I knew and was already obeying."

Let me give you a quotation from Martin Luther. Martin Luther said at one point when he was talking along these lines, "I never knew the meaning of God's word until I came into affliction. I have always found it one of my best schoolmasters." Now, Luther knew the word of God, of course. He had been studying it even before his conversion. He knew it in that sense. But he says that as I obeyed it and went through life's struggles, I came to know it in an even deeper sense.

Now, so far in our study of this ninth section here beginning with verse 65, I've been talking about affliction. But it's worth saying at this point that that is not the most prominent word in the stanza. What is the most prominent word in the stanza? The word good. It occurs five times. You have it in verses 65, 66, 68, 71, and 72, though it doesn't appear exactly like that in all our translations.

There's a very good reason why the word good appears in this stanza so many times. It's because the word for good in Hebrew is tob, and it begins with a T, and this is the teth or T stanza. It was quite natural for the Psalmist to begin a lot of the lines with the word tob. You recall we've had things like that before. If you go back a little bit to the waw stanza, verses 41 and following, that Hebrew letter is used as the conjunction "and", and so you find it at the beginning of every single one of those verses in that particular stanza. The heth stanza had something similar.

Well, that's one reason, but of course, it's not the most profound reason. Most profound reason is that the Psalmist discovered as he got to know and obey God's law that it really is a good law and that God is good in giving it. Let me just run through the verses where the word good occurs.

In God isn't good, listen to what the Psalmist found. Verse 65, "Do good to your servant according to your word, Oh Lord." That's the general statement. It's asking God to do good to the Psalmist, which God has done, he said it already, and is doing, and certainly will continue to do. Some writers have called that the text for which the rest of the stanza is the sermon or the exposition. "Do good to your servant according to your word."

Verse 66, "Teach me knowledge and good judgment for I believe in your commands." That's an elaboration of the general statement. It explains that the good that the Psalmist wants is not merely the affliction itself that has a good purpose, but that by it he might come to know God's ways and acquire good judgment. Every believer needs good judgment. One of the things that is so often lacking in evangelical churches, good judgment. But it comes, you see, from knowing the word and living it out in the afflictions and imperfections of this life.

Verse 68, "You are good and what you do is good. Teach me your decrees." That's the middle verse of the five that use the word good, and it's most important because it anchors us in the very goodness of God. Reminds us that however different it may seem, regardless of what we're going through, God is good and all He does is good. And so, the afflictions are good as well.

Verse 71 says that, "It was good for me to be afflicted so I might learn your decrees." Now that verse applies the general goodness of God's character to the specific matter of the Psalmist's sufferings. Since God is good and since He sends suffering, that suffering must have a good purpose. That verse really is an Old Testament equivalent of a verse from the New Testament that we know very well. Many of us have memorized it. Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those that love him who are called according to his purpose." In all things God is working for good in your life, and that includes the things that in themselves are not desirable.

Finally, verse 72, "The law from your mouth is more precious..." The word is actually "good" to me, "than thousands of pieces of silver and gold." Herbert Lockyer is a man who compiles a lot of interesting information on various parts of the Bible, and he's done that on the Psalms. And at this point, he has an interesting story about the largest Bible in the world.

Do you know what the largest Bible in the world is, where it is? It's a Hebrew Bible, and it's in the Vatican Library in Rome. It's been there a long, long time. Many years ago in the Middle Ages, a group of Jews in Italy heard about it and asked if they could see it. They were allowed to go in and see this weighty Bible. They discovered it was 320 pounds. And then they left and they got together a group of other Jews, largely from Russia, who had a lot of money and they offered to buy it from the Vatican. They said, "We'll give you the weight of the Bible in gold."

Julius II was the Pope at that time, and he declined the offer because he considered the Bible to be more precious even than that great, great amount of money in gold. And Lockyer says thousands of gold and silver pieces are as nothing in comparison with the precious word of God. Do you know that? I'm sure you do. Do you believe it? I'm sure you do, yes. But do you really value it? If we really thought of the Bible as being as important as it is, we would use it more. We'd learn it. We would make it part of our very makeup and lay up its word in our heart so we might not sin against God. I'm afraid that in many cases we don't really value it that way.

Well, let's go to the next stanza, the Yodh stanza. That's the small letter that Jesus referred to in Matthew 5 when He said, "Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished." That smallest letter is the Yodh and it's a mere dash of a letter. This is the Yodh stanza, but it's not dealing with trifles. On the contrary, like the stanza before it and the one after it, it is dealing with the afflictions that come into the life of a believing child of God.

Now what does this stanza teach us about affliction? What it teaches explicitly is what was assumed in the previous stanza, and that is that God is the ultimate source of the affliction. Notice verse 75, "I know, oh Lord, that your laws are righteous and in faithfulness you have afflicted me." That's a very important thing to know because it's going to keep us from a lot of troubles.

You see, if God is not the source of the affliction as well as everything else that comes into our lives, then you only have one of two choices. Either it's other people who are the cause, or it's just that we live in a meaningless world and there's no cause at least. If you conclude that it's other people, you become bitter. If you conclude that there's no meaning to it, you despair.

It's quite an important thing to recognize that God stands behind it. It doesn't mean that we understand all His ways, that we know what He's doing, that we can foresee the result in every case, but it gives you an entirely different way of thinking when you go through these things in life.

Now notice what the Psalmist says. He begins this stanza not by talking about his suffering, but by confessing that he was made and formed by God, verse 73. Now what's the point of that? Why does he begin that way? Well, when he says that he was formed by God, that's a deliberate echo of the second chapter of Genesis where God is said to have formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

The Psalmist has that in mind and he probably does because of the use of that particular word. What he is recognizing there is that God created him in a special way and different from the animals. The animals don't have understanding. They have life physically, but not the spiritual life of understanding that comes from the breath of God. In other words, if I could put it this way, as a human being, he was made to know and understand the ways of God. And so, having set up that parameter, he goes on in the stanza to say one of the ways God teaches me His ways is by the affliction.

Now he asks, what did he come to understand? What he's concerned about, you ask that question, you find that it's quite a few things and all of them are important. First of all, verse 75, that God is faithful even in the affliction. You say, faithful to what or to whom? If the affliction were caused by the Psalmist's sin, then that would mean that God is faithful to Himself and His righteousness. He is a just God. He punishes sin. Sin has consequences. That would make sense, but I don't think that's what he's talking about here.

The faithfulness mentioned here is probably referring to God's faithfulness to the Psalmist. In other words, that although he's going through these things, God hasn't abandoned him, but rather has drawn very close to him and enabled him to see at least in part what God is doing in his life by means of the affliction. Have you found that as you've gone through hard times in your life? Most Christians can say they have. That's exactly the way God works. We don't say as we go through these things God has abandoned me. We say on the contrary, God is faithful and I've actually come to love Him more.

The second thing he comes to understand is that God's unfailing love is a comfort. That's what he's talking about in verse 76. You see, it's one thing to know that God has sent it and to get a right framework on that, but suffering still hurts. There's still pain in the things we go through. And when that happens, understanding alone is not enough. What we really long for is comfort. We want someone to come alongside of us and say, "I understand, I understand, but it'll be all right." And that's what he says God does. He's experienced that; maybe you have too.

The third thing he has come to understand is that God is compassionate, verse 77. God doesn't need to be. The word that appears there signifies mercy, and mercy by its very definition refers to grace being shown to those who are undeserving, in fact, those who deserve the exact opposite. But the point is that God is merciful. His very name is mercy. That's the name by which He revealed Himself to Moses on the mount in the 33rd chapter of the book of Exodus. So, whatever we're going through and whether it's the result of our sin or not, and we do bring many of these things upon ourselves, though not all, we find that God is merciful. We can appeal to God on the basis of His mercy. And as we do, we find Him to be merciful. He delights to be merciful. He wants to show Himself to you to be a merciful God.

And then there's a fourth thing that he comes to understand, that one's handling of suffering can be and ought to be an encouragement to other believers. He says it in verse 79, and there's also a reflection of that in verse 74. You see, for the most part throughout these stanzas, the Psalmist has been thinking about and praying about himself. And that's natural. He's the one that's hurting. That's what's weighing on him. He's concerned. But as he works his way through that, and as God gives him understanding of what's going on, he realizes that one purpose in his suffering is that out of it he might be able to encourage other people. And he wants to be an encouragement.

So, you find him uttering these two prayers: "May they who fear you rejoice when they see me," verse 74, and "May those who fear you turn to me, those who understand your statutes." Are other believers happy when they see you? Do they count you to be a source of encouragement?

The very end of this stanza, the writer utters three prayers: for the arrogant, that they might be put to shame, verse 78; for other believers, that they might be encouraged by his example, verse 79, as what we've looked at; and then for himself, that he might be enabled to live in a blameless manner so far as God's decrees are concerned, verse 80. You see, if he's going to be an encouragement to others, he has to live in an upright way himself even when he's suffering.

The heathen used to have an expression that indicated their desire in life. They wanted a sound mind in a sound body. Sometimes we hear that today. The Psalmist wants more, however. He wants a sound heart, a heart that's blameless because he's following after God.

Now we come to the last of these stanzas, and this brings us to the lowest point in the Psalm. It's just before the halfway mark. The end of this Psalm, there's a break and it begins to move upward again. Charles Spurgeon wrote about this particular stanza: "This octave is the midnight of the Psalm, and very dark and black it is." But he also said that even in the blackness, stars shine out and the last verse gives promise of the dawn.

It may be significant in this respect. We said at the very beginning of these studies that there are a number of verses that don't seem to mention the Bible, and the very first one in all the Psalm that we've come to is in this stanza, verse 84. The first verse that doesn't mention the Bible explicitly, it might be a clue that in his affliction, in his depression at this low point, he actually loses sight of God's word temporarily.

Now it has a great deal to say about his enemies, as if at this point his thoughts are almost entirely taken up with them. He's spoken of them before. He's going to speak about them again, but from this point on, the tone changes. He doesn't look at it quite that way. Here he says that these enemies have been persecuting him, verse 84; they've been digging pitfalls for him, verse 85; and they're trying to wipe him from the earth, verse 87. Now in the Hebrew, that last phrase "from the earth" is actually "in the earth". Wipe him in the earth. And it doesn't seem to make sense until you look back to the fact that they were digging pits for him. How did they want to take care of him in the earth? Well, they wanted to stick him in one of those pits, is what they wanted to do. They wanted him dead and buried. That's the idea. So, no wonder he's so depressed in the stanza. You and I get depressed and we're not even threatened with something like that.

Depressed, yes, but not defeated. Knocked down, yes, but not knocked out. The ancients had another saying, and I'll give it to you in Latin. It goes like this: Dum spiro spero. Now spero we might know because we have a medical clinic in the city called Esperanza. It's the Spanish version of the same Latin word, has to do with hope. And the first word I gave, spiro, has to do with breathing, like expiration, perspiration, inspiration, all of that's related to breathing somehow. So, that phrase Dum spiro spero means while I breathe, I hope. We say where there's life, there's hope. It goes that way. Same saying.

Well, what the Psalmist is saying here is something even better. He's exclaiming Dum expiro spero. Even when I expire and die, I still will hope because my hope is grounded in God. Some writers, including Saint Jerome and Ambrose, have pointed out that there was significance in the minds of many people to the Hebrew letters.

And this last stanza, verses 81 to 86, is the kaph stanza. If you look at that letter in your Bibles, if you have a Bible that prints the letter, you find that it's a curved letter similar to a half circle. And Jerome and these others say that it was often thought of as a hand held out to receive some blessing. Well, that's a good point on which to end this study. Here the author is in need and he knows that the only one who can answer his need is God. And so, as he ends the stanza, he's really holding out his hand toward God as a suppliant. He says, in spite of all my trouble, "preserve my life according to your love and I will obey the statutes of your mouth."

In the final analysis, that's all any of us can do. We can hold out empty hands. If we hold out hands that are filled with our own good works, God can't fill them. If we keep our hands clenched to ourselves in order that we might maintain our possessions and have nobody get them, God can't help us. But if we open them up as sinners saying, "Lord, I am a helpless man, I'm a helpless woman, and I stand in need of Your grace. You're a God of mercy. I look to You for mercy." Then God can not only fill our hands, He will fill them to the glory of His great grace.

Our Father, we thank You for these verses that we have been able to study. We thank You for the many evidences of Your goodness in our lives, not only in the good times but even more particularly in the times of affliction and suffering that everyone has. Would You use this study to give direction, understanding, and above all, blessing to many in order that the affliction might work character, and the character might work hope, and we as we go through it might be an encouragement and blessing to other people as well as a testimony to Your great grace. In the name of Christ our Lord, Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit alliancenet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888.

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