[0:00] Take your Bibles once again and turn to Psalm 119.! Psalm 119. We'll be reading together verses 65 to 75.
[0:13] ! Psalm 119, beginning in verse 65.! This is the word of the Lord. Do good to your servant according to your word, O Lord.
[0:25] Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I believe in your commands. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your word. You are good, and what you do is good.
[0:38] Teach me your decrees. Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are callous and unfeeling, but I delight in your law.
[0:52] It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees. The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.
[1:03] Your hands made me and formed me. Give me understanding to learn your commands. May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I've put my hope in your word.
[1:14] I know, O Lord, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me. As we are making our way through Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, we're finding that it's full of petitions and praises for God's word.
[1:34] Seven times a day, David says, I praise you for your righteous laws. Why, David? Well, the whole chapter is full of reasons why, but we've looked at one because this word of God is the only safe guide to the Father's house.
[1:56] David is thankful for his Bible, and he had a much smaller Bible than we do. But David is not only content to have the textbook of God, he wants to have the teacher who is God.
[2:12] And so one of the most repeated prayers in this psalm is that two-word prayer, teach me. Teach me. We just sang it. I wonder if you cried out to God each time you opened his word this week.
[2:27] Teach me, Lord. Because unless you teach me, I read in vain. I memorize in vain. I meditate in vain. We want to be taught by the Lord himself.
[2:40] Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, we have the best of books and the best of teachers in God himself. He's able to do more than just inform us of the right way to go.
[2:54] He's able to put that truth in our inward parts, to put it into our minds, to write it in on our hearts, our affections, our will, to turn us in the way of his commands, to obey with all of our heart.
[3:08] These are the things that our teacher can do. What a privilege to have God then as our teacher, the God of perfect wisdom, power, and love.
[3:18] Now, students, that's all of us, there's more than one way to learn. The primary way is with books in the classroom, isn't it?
[3:33] But good teachers will also take you out of the classroom, maybe into the lab, into the kitchen, into the shop room, or even on a field trip.
[3:47] And there, the lessons of the textbook in the classroom are enhanced and deepened as you step into the real world and see that truth being lived out.
[4:01] Let's say you're studying in your classroom all about the Grand Canyon, and you learn all kinds of facts about it. And then your teacher says, okay, we're going on a field trip to the Grand Canyon.
[4:15] And now you get to see it with your own eyes, and you stare at it, and you see it during different times of the day as the sun splashes its light on different rocks.
[4:26] And maybe you even go down into the canyon. You come home with a deeper, a broader, a higher learning about the Grand Canyon.
[4:38] And in the same way, God's teaching is not all done in the classroom with the textbook in our laps, in the Sunday school classes, in the worship service where God's Word is read and preached and sung and prayed.
[4:57] Not even in your own private devotions or family worship where you're reading with the Bible open. Not all of His teaching is done there. These are the primary means of teaching, but not His only ways of teaching us.
[5:13] He takes us on field trips out into the real world. Field trips of affliction to drive home the lessons of the classroom, of the textbook.
[5:27] So that what you're learning here, you may learn in a deeper way out there. Now, in our passage this morning, we learn that David has been in the painful field trip of affliction.
[5:40] And get this, he's not complaining about it. He's not looking for a new teacher with more user-friendly, easier methods of learning. No, he's praising his teacher for teaching him in this very method of affliction.
[5:58] Notice three verses with me this morning. Verse 67. Verse 71. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your Word.
[6:11] Verse 71. It was good for me to be afflicted so that I may learn your decrees. Verse 75.
[6:22] I know, O Lord, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me. May the Lord so teach us this morning that we too will sweetly submit to our teachers' lessons of affliction and come away the better for it.
[6:43] Just two truths from these texts this morning. And the one main point is just that our divine teacher uses affliction to teach the straying to obey.
[6:55] Our divine teacher uses affliction to teach straying students to obey. Verse 67.
[7:07] Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your Word. Now, afflictions come in all shapes and sizes of troubles and trials, of suffering and hardship.
[7:22] They're all painful. They're all distasteful to us. They all interrupt our ease and pleasure, but they all are teaching methods of our all-wise divine teacher.
[7:36] Notice the time markers. There's a before and an after. Another, David says, before I was afflicted. He's looking back to a time when things were going his way.
[7:49] He was enjoying success. No real bumps in the road. No real problems. I was doing well in the outward things. But it was precisely then that he went astray.
[8:01] Before I was afflicted, I went astray. That is astray from God and astray from his commands.
[8:12] And be sure of this. If you stray from God's commands, you are straying from him. He takes it personally. To despise his Word is to despise him.
[8:25] So David went astray when things were going his way. And we need to learn from this. That when troubles are few, temptations are many.
[8:37] It's easy then to become careless. To neglect the means of grace, both public and private. To cease to watch and pray. And slowly and perhaps even imperceptibly, we drift from nearness to God.
[8:53] We're well off. We're in need of nothing. And soon we find our lives full of earthly things that keep us busy. Too busy.
[9:06] And soon our hearts are cold toward God and we start cutting corners on his commands. Flavel says, Affliction may have killed her thousands, but prosperity her tens of thousands.
[9:19] Before I was afflicted, I went astray. Now, perhaps David is thinking of many different times that this was true, but it surely fits the time of his adultery with Bathsheba.
[9:36] David was then well established as the king of Israel. Many accomplishments, vast wealth, military victories and successes.
[9:48] Things were going his way as the king of Israel. No more troubled times like those years, year after year, running from King Saul. When he was so needy just to stay alive, he was seeking God.
[10:01] God, preserve my life. Keep me alive that I may praise you. But now, no more troubles are coming his way.
[10:14] And so it's the spring of the year, the time when kings go off into battle. And David sends his army off, but David stays back at home, kicking back, enjoying palace life.
[10:29] And perhaps even without realizing it, his heart begins to grow cold toward the things of God and then actually strays from him to the point of trampling on his commands.
[10:42] You say, what commands? Well, take the Ten Commandments. Number ten, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. And that's what he did with Bathsheba, Uriah's wife.
[10:54] Number seven, you shall not commit adultery, which is what his lusting led to. Number nine, you shall not bear false witness, which is what with his enacted lies he was doing to try to cover his tracks.
[11:11] And number six, you shall not murder, which is exactly what he did to Uriah. Before I was afflicted, I went astray.
[11:22] Boy, did he ever go astray. And it is a frightening thing to think how far off we would stray if the Lord never afflicted us.
[11:36] Just how far we would go from God and his ways. God could say to a king of Judah later, Jehoiakim, I spoke to you in prosperity, but you said I will not listen.
[11:49] And so God spoke to him in affliction, in ways that he had to hear. Someone said that in prosperity, God whispers, but in afflictions, he shouts.
[12:07] The Lord did afflict David in his faithfulness with inward distress, with conviction of sin. He tells us of it in several of his psalms.
[12:19] Psalm 32, when I kept silent, that means I didn't confess, I didn't open my mouth and confess. I was covering up, and I was being silent. And when I was silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
[12:34] For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. God afflicted him with soul trouble.
[12:47] Not all of his affliction is on the body. There's soul trouble, a heavy hand of God, overwhelming him with his sin and guilt, like a burden too heavy to be borne. His sin was ever before him, he says.
[13:00] My bones were crushed. My joy was gone. His divine teacher was teaching him with more than words that the way of the transgressor is hard.
[13:14] That was the lesson. And so after the illegitimate child was born, the divine teacher brought Nathan the prophet to teach David the seriousness of his sin and to announce further afflictions from the Lord.
[13:28] Because you despised me and my word and struck down Uriah with the sword and took his wife to be your own. Therefore, the sword will never depart from your house.
[13:40] Second Samuel 12, 9 and 10. The sword never departing from his house. And the first to die was the son born to Bathsheba.
[13:52] The Lord first struck him with illness. And though David refused to eat and spent the nights lying on the ground and pleading with God to heal their child, nevertheless, on the seventh day, the child died.
[14:12] Sometime later, David's son, son Amnon, was murdered by his own brother Absalom. And time later, Absalom, his son, was killed in the insurrection, seeking to throw his father off the throne.
[14:25] You see, the sword did not depart from David's household. The divine teacher had an all-important lesson to teach his student David about the evil of despising him and his word.
[14:40] So in addition to the classroom lesson of giving to David the Ten Commandments, the Lord took up the rod of affliction upon his strange student.
[14:57] Can you imagine with the loss of each son how much more the lesson was branded, pushed down into his heart that the way of the transgressor is hard?
[15:15] It was serious medicine for serious sin, and it was effective. Listen again to David's own testimony in verse 67. Before I was afflicted, I went astray.
[15:27] But now, now after the affliction, I obey your word. It worked. The teacher got the message through.
[15:38] And taught him with the rod of affliction. Now before we go on, we need to pause and realize that renewed obedience, such as David is here professing, is not the work of affliction alone.
[15:52] You know, some actually grow worse through affliction. They grow bitter, not better. No, it's only effective under the powerful hand of the master teacher.
[16:11] Because with the affliction, he can reach into the heart and into the affections and into the will and turn the heart toward his statutes, not toward selfish gain.
[16:22] This is no ordinary teacher. And he's mine. And he's yours. May we prize him.
[16:35] Maybe you know children whose hearts grow harder under discipline, not softer. Well, apart from God teaching, affliction hardens rather than softens.
[16:48] So, it is his teacher, again, who uses the rod of affliction to teach David such that he says, now, I obey your word.
[17:03] David's not complaining. He's not looking for a new teacher. with easier methods of learning. That's the bane of our day. Professing Christians that don't like God's method of teaching with rebuke and correction and discipline.
[17:20] And so, they gather around them groups of teachers to tell them what their itching ears want to hear. Tell us pleasant things and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel.
[17:34] God says they're deceitful children. Children unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction. That's not David. Notice David's heart again in verse 67.
[17:46] Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now, I obey your word and don't miss the next words out of his mouth. Verse 68. You are good and what you do is good.
[17:57] Teach me your decrees. You are good. That's your nature. What you do is good. That's your deeds. Teach me your decrees.
[18:08] That's David's renewed prayer after being taught by God's affliction. Now, perhaps at the time it was hard to see the goodness of God in the painful affliction.
[18:21] But he's looking back now, isn't he? And he sees the good result of the teacher's ride. He says, it brought me back from straying to obeying.
[18:33] And so he concludes in verse 71. It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. Lord, it was good not just for you, but it was good for me.
[18:45] It was beneficial for me. And what was that benefit? That I learned to obey your commands.
[18:55] And that was the answer to his earlier prayer. Remember last week, verse 33? Teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees, then I will keep them to the end.
[19:08] And God did just that when David strayed from his hands. Isn't God good that he went after him with the rod of affliction and he brought him back and answered his prayer and taught him to obey, to follow?
[19:21] He's not complaining. He's not backing away from God's teaching.
[19:35] He's praising God for it. He's leaning into it and asking for more of it. Teach me. Teach me. Because it was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your decrees.
[19:51] Well, that was the good that David wanted from this good and gracious God. Because blessed is the man you discipline, O Lord, the man you teach from your law, Psalm 94, 12.
[20:10] And you will never know joy and peace in your affliction unless you are absolutely convinced of the goodness of your teacher.
[20:21] David was convinced you are good. You can no more cease to be good than you could cease to be God. It's your nature.
[20:33] And therefore, your actions flow from your nature. All that you do is good, even the affliction that you bring to me. So teach me. You see it? Yeah. He's no ordinary teacher.
[20:50] He's always up to something good in your life, child of God. Calvin says, there's nothing in affliction which ought to disturb our joy.
[21:01] Not if we realize the goodness of our teacher and the good that he brings about through the affliction. He does it to teach us to obey him.
[21:14] And that's where I want to go. Direct me in the path of your commands for there I find the light. Now, this should be familiar to you parents.
[21:30] Over and over, God tells you in his word that your children have foolishness bound up in their hearts. And that they not only need your words of instruction, they also need the painful rod when they trample on your words.
[21:47] Because by the rod, they learn to obey your words instead of ignoring them. So the rod, the paddle of discipline, what do we nickname it?
[22:02] The board of education, don't we? Education. That's rightly, aptly named, isn't it? Because it's a tool to teach.
[22:17] To teach a lesson that they will not quickly forget. Children who refuse to learn to obey your words need to learn by the smart of the rod.
[22:28] Your children need the rod of affliction. And listen, so do God's children. We're no different on that score. And David knows that and he appreciates that about his heavenly father.
[22:44] Again, verse 75, I know, O Lord, that your laws are righteous and in faithfulness you have afflicted me. God's afflictions to his people are always sent from his faithful love for them.
[23:03] You're familiar with Hebrews 12, 6 to 11. My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines those he loves.
[23:16] So endure hardship as discipline, as child training. God is treating you as sons for what son is not disciplined by his father. If you're not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.
[23:32] Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the father of our spirits and live?
[23:45] Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best but God disciplines us for our profit, for our good, for what is best that we may share in his holiness a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been no discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful.
[24:05] Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. You see that the use of the rod in raising children is an expression of your love, parents, or your children.
[24:25] We didn't feel that way when we were the kids but we now understand that more than ever, don't we? We love them too much to let them stray on thinking that they can just brush off one of God's commands coming through his appointed authorities over them in the home.
[24:45] You know what the word of God teaches in Proverbs 13, 24? Whoever spares the rod hates his son. That's strong language.
[24:56] It must be that mothers need that verse and fathers too because that's how he continues. Whoever spares the rod hates his son but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
[25:10] So faithful parent, teacher, it's hard to wound those we love yet God's word says if we spare the rod we spoil the child.
[25:20] They don't learn the lessons they need for life. Yes, for eternal life because they must come to bow before the greatest authority of all and trust in the Savior and obey the command of the gospel to turn from their own trust and righteousness of their own and works of their goodness and rather to put all their faith in Christ and to follow him.
[25:47] So, it is hard to wound those we love but we do it because we love them and we seek their good. The rod of discipline is necessary in every family God's family included.
[26:04] God is no indulgent parent like Eli who failed to discipline his sons for the evil that they were doing in the tabernacle and because of it his family received great judgment.
[26:18] No, our father is a faithful father. He will have no spoiled brats in his family. So, don't lose heart when he afflicts you because the Lord disciplines those he loves.
[26:33] He's being a faithful, loving, good, and kind father to you. I love what John Mason said, by affliction God separates the sin that he hates from the soul that he loves.
[26:46] That's what he's doing in discipline. He's seeking to separate the sin that he hates from the soul, the son that he loves. He loves you too much to let you go on in sin.
[27:02] So, that's the main point of these verses that our divine teacher uses affliction to teach the strain to obey. But, secondly, our divine teacher uses affliction to teach many other good lessons.
[27:19] Not all affliction comes because we are straying and have sinned. Now, it's good and proper when affliction comes to ask, Lord, search me and try me and show me is there any offensive way in me and correct it that I might walk in the way everlasting.
[27:40] Because we do know that God does afflict us when we sin. We should ask him to search us and show us. But God has many other lessons that he teaches us through afflictions beside the lesson of learning to obey him.
[27:54] And all these lessons are good for us. It was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your decrees.
[28:09] Luther said that I never understood a passage of Scripture until I went into the school of affliction and then, oh, how I understood.
[28:21] A deeper understanding of God's words. It was good for me to be afflicted, to learn your decrees, to learn many other lessons.
[28:32] Job, he was severely afflicted, but it wasn't because of any provoking sin. Rather, it was because of his holiness. It drew the attention of the devil who said, well, he's only following you, Lord, and loving you and obeying you because you're so good to him.
[28:48] Strike him now. Go after him and you'll see he'll curse you to your face. It was his holiness that caused him to be afflicted and God gives him the rain to Satan and says, okay, go, but don't touch him.
[29:05] And he takes his family and he takes all of his wealth, which was his cattle, his livestock. God says, have you seen my servant Job? He's not cursing me, he's still blessing me.
[29:16] Yeah, but you touch his body, you touch him and he'll curse you to your face. God gives more leash to the devil.
[29:27] He covers him with boils, painful boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. That affliction did not come because of some sin.
[29:41] No, but it came to teach him. And oh, how Job learned through all of his ups and downs how to honor God in his affliction and how he grew in humility through it.
[29:54] Or take the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. He's given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment him, not because of some sin, but to keep him from some sin.
[30:09] Remember how God said that because, Paul says, he realized that because of the surpassing revelations that he received from God, to keep him from conceit and getting the big head, God sent a messenger of Satan to torment him, a thorn in the flesh.
[30:32] And even though Paul cried out at least three times for the Lord to take it away, he chose to leave it to demonstrate that his grace is sufficient for me. How would have he learned that?
[30:42] That God's grace is enough. I don't need all these other props. He knocks the props out from under him. What? To teach him, not to discipline him for sin, to teach him just how all-sufficient his God is.
[30:58] To have the power of Christ tabernacling, resting upon him. He actually comes to rejoice in his weakness and in his afflictions and in his afflictions that God's strength might be experienced.
[31:21] There are great and good lessons that the Lord teaches his children in his school of affliction. Andre Crouch had a song through it all.
[31:34] You remember it perhaps. He sang of many tears and sorrows in life, but he comes to thank God for the valleys and the storms. For if I never had a problem, how would I know that God could solve them?
[31:48] How would I know what faith in God could do? Through it all, I've learned. I've learned to trust in Jesus. I've learned to trust in God. Through it all, I've learned to depend upon his word.
[32:04] He's confessing, I wouldn't have learned those things as I have had I not had to go through it all. David too came to appreciate the word of God even more in his affliction.
[32:17] He says in verse 92, if your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. So David says, I came out of that affliction a greater appreciation for your word.
[32:29] Well, what's that word? That's not a small gain, is it? David, and David's counting his gains, coming from affliction. My comfort in my suffering is this, your promise preserves my life.
[32:45] The Apostle Paul says that the God of all comfort comforts us in all our troubles, 2 Corinthians 1. But how would we know God's overflowing comfort without the troubles?
[32:57] We wouldn't. How would we learn the depths of his love? How would we learn that he is a refuge? He's a refuge when we're in trouble.
[33:08] If we didn't have some storms and troubled waters, how would we learn that Jehovah Jireh is a provider for his people? If we didn't face some desperate need and cry out to him to provide?
[33:23] How would we learn that his power is at work in us if we never felt our weakness? How would we know his wisdom if we never felt lost, not knowing what to do in this situation and seeking him?
[33:37] How would our faith ever be strengthened if it was never tried in affliction? How would we even know that he's enough if we weren't stripped of those other sources of joy and strength? How would we ever bear more fruit unless the Father pruned us?
[33:51] that's the skill of our teacher and it's amazing. He prunes us that we might bring more fruit to the glory and praise of God.
[34:05] How much good has he taught you through affliction? How much good has he taught you through affliction? Joseph can post this motto over the whole of his life, so checkered with affliction.
[34:18] what you, my brothers, meant for evil, God meant for good. There's a lot of evil, a lot of affliction in that life and he says over it all God meant it for good and God brought good out of it.
[34:36] Indeed the saving of many alive. It's no less for you, believer. What a teacher we have. Most of God's people, if you ask them what are the most important lessons you have learned in your life, will look back and say it was that hard time and that hard time.
[34:59] Not the easy times, but the hard times. It was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn. I learned so much about God, my God.
[35:10] I learned so much about myself, my need of this God. I learned so much about his love, his goodness, his willingness to help me, to hear my prayer. And they say, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
[35:23] You remember Johnny Erickson? When she gets to heaven, she's standing there before her Lord, standing there now, after the resurrection, on her own two feet, and there's her wheelchair, and she says, Lord, before you throw this thing into hell, I would like to thank you for it, because it was in this chair that I came to know you in a way I never could have got to know you.
[35:47] She's counting her gains. Brother, I believe that the greatest and highest praise we will give to God in heaven will be for those precise things that cause us the greatest pain on earth.
[35:59] Why? Because we will see how good and how faithful and loving and kind he was in afflicting us. They might draw us near and teach us things that we need for life and godliness.
[36:15] Things that we need, yes, to make our way safely home to heaven. And our Lord Jesus would say the same, by the way.
[36:33] Augustine said, God had one son on earth without sin, but no son without suffering. Hebrews 5, 8, and 9 is why he could say that.
[36:47] Although he was a son, he learned obedience by what he suffered. Although he was a son, his one and only son, his sinless son, he learned obedience by the things that he suffered.
[37:04] And once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. All through his earthly life, our Lord Jesus was learning obedience through suffering.
[37:21] He was learning the habit of obedience by its constant exercise under great affliction. salvation. He's first driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights.
[37:36] It wasn't just the three temptations at the end of the four, all the 40 days and 40 nights. He's being tempted by the devil. And each time he resisted the devil, the habit of obedience was being learned and hardened into a solid principle.
[38:03] I will obey. I will obey. It was suffering for Jesus to be tempted. He was afflicted for the holy soul of Jesus to have unholy things set before him.
[38:17] He suffered being tempted and he was learning obedience through it. And when Satan left him, it was just for a convenient season. He was nipping at his heels all through his life, tempting him, even through Peter.
[38:37] And never more intensely than in Gethsemane and Golgotha, he's learning the habit of obedience, learning it through suffering. He's growing up in poverty.
[38:51] He knows the affliction of the loss of a human father's love. He's coming to his own and he's finding his own, not receiving him. Don't think that didn't hurt Jesus.
[39:05] It hurt him. And he was learning from the rod of affliction. Not for sin, he's learning something important, to obey God even when it hurts, especially them.
[39:21] He's rejected by the religious leaders of Israel, by his own countrymen, even his own townsmen in Nazareth. He's betrayed by one of his own disciples three times. His closest friend says, I don't even know the man and God curse me if I do.
[39:39] And he's forsaken by them all on the night of his rest. It was all preparation for the final test of Golgotha. The hour of Satan's power where our Lord was tempted over and over and over again to do what?
[39:55] To save himself from suffering. But you see, he has learned obedience through the things that he suffered. And so he's ready for this temptation, for the ultimate temptation, because he's been learning all through his life.
[40:12] To obey with pain is better than to disobey with ease. He's been doing it. He's been doing it. And so now he humbles himself and is obedient to death, to the death of the cross.
[40:33] Never was a man more tried and afflicted. Never was a man ever taught obedience by the things that he suffered than this man, the God man.
[40:50] And never did more good come out of being afflicted. Indeed, your salvation and mine. God knows what he's doing with his children.
[41:03] And Jesus is set before us here. This is the way the master went. Should not the servants tread it still? Should we ask for an easier path when he took up his cross and went to Golgotha and calls on us to deny ourselves and take up our cross and to follow him?
[41:26] Follow him learning through our afflictions to obey. Well, let me close with just two brief assignments.
[41:39] first of all, about past afflictions. Think back over the hardest afflictions in your life. Maybe you could share around the fellowship tables today. What good things came to you from those afflictions?
[41:53] The valuable lessons? And then thank God for his faithfulness in afflicting you. Yes, I do believe in heaven. We will praise him for those things.
[42:04] We'll begin now on earth to thank him. Knowing that in faithfulness he is afflicted. Then present afflictions, not only our past afflictions, let's learn from them as David did, but from present afflictions.
[42:20] You know, those are the worst kind, aren't they? We can say, I have nothing against trials, I just don't like mine. And I don't have problems with past ones, but I don't like present ones.
[42:32] But your old wise teacher has handpicked your afflictions. Every one of them. for the very thing that you need to be taught.
[42:46] Wisely and faithfully he comes to teach you. So, in your present affliction, your greatest prayer should not be, take it away Lord, but teach me.
[42:59] That's what David teaches us. The greatest prayer. Now, it's not wrong. Paul prayed three times, didn't he? Jesus cried out in Gethsemane three times, didn't he?
[43:11] But the most important prayer is, Father, if you don't take it away, please teach me through it. You know, it's a terrible thing to waste an affliction, to go through the pain of an affliction, and to come out no better than when you came in.
[43:27] So, learn from David in your present afflictions, to trace the rod of affliction back up to the hand and arm and heart of the one who's wielding the rod.
[43:41] It is all love to you, brother. It is all goodness to you, sister. And so, you can say, teach me. Teach me what I need to learn in this situation.
[43:53] You know, Job had his problems, and he was wanting to see where God was in all of this. And where he's leading me, I don't have a clue where he is.
[44:05] I go north, I go south, I go east, I find him nowhere. And then he says this, Job 23, 10, but he knows the way that I take, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
[44:21] Child of God, you're his treasure. You are his gold, and if he has you in the furnace of affliction, it's not to destroy you. I only design thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
[44:37] In the furnace, God may prove thee thence to bring thee forth more bright, but can never cease to love thee. Thou art precious in his sight. Let's pray. Oh, Father, how often we have taken for granted your loving kindness in afflictions to us.
[44:58] How thankful we are that these things don't just fall out in our lives by chance, but they're ordered by you. Thank you for being our teacher and knowing just what to give us from your book and from those field trips of affliction.
[45:14] Oh, teach us. Forgive us for our complaining and thinking that this is some by-path meadow. No, it's where you've got us and for a good purpose. So teach us, we pray, and be honored then by cheerful Christians in affliction who trust their heavenly divine teacher.
[45:36] For your praise and glory, for our good and joy, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.