#DailyDevotion Suffering Allows Us To Learn God’s Way
Psalm 119 65O LORD, You have treated Your servant well, as You promised (dabar). 66Teach me good judgment and knowledge because I trust Your commandments (mitsvah). 67Before I suffered, I was going wrong, but now I do what You say (imrah). 68You are good, and You do good — teach me Your laws (choq). 69Proud men have smeared me with lies, but with all my heart I follow the way You want me to live (piqqud). 70Their heart is like fat without feeling, but I delight in Your teaching (torah). 71It is good for me to have suffered in order to learn Your laws (choq). 72Your teaching (torah) is worth more to me than thousands in gold and silver.
This is an interesting section of the Psalm. It starts off with how the LORD has treated him well as He has promised, i.e. according to His word. The LORD indeed keeps all of His promises. Some of those promises are conditional. We should not expect the LORD to treat us well if we are acting contrary to His will. On the other hand, if we are acting contrary to His will and He disciplines us, that discipline is coming from a place of His love. He has promised to discipline us so we don’t perish.
The psalmist declares he trusts in the LORD’s commandments. What does that look like? It looks like us trusting the LORD knows what He is talking about when He tells us to do some things and prohibits other things. We trust He knows what He is talking about. He knows and wants what is best for us. Those things are contained in His commandments. As we trust in them and therefore act in them, the LORD gives us good judgment and knowledge. This becomes experiential knowledge, not just book knowledge.
At some point in time the psalmist went astray. He was not keeping nor doing what the LORD had said. Then, it appears the LORD disciplined him and made him suffer. If we are not living according to the LORD’s revealed will, we should not expect things to go well for us. We should expect the LORD will discipline us to call us to repentance and faith. Having recognized we are not living according to His word, we, by the power of the Holy Spirit do what the LORD says.
Besides our own sins causing us trouble, we will have wicked people, proud people who may tell lies against us. The Hebrew says their brains are fat, i.e. stupid. They are without feeling—at least for other people. Despite them, he wants to follow the details of the covenant given in the law of Moses. He delights in them. He delights in all the LORD’s teachings. If our faith and trust are in the salvation Jesus has provided us, if Jesus is our trust and confidence before the Father, then our hearts too should delight in, rejoice in studying the ways Jesus has given us, and not think of them as something difficult, hard to understand or a burden.
He returns back to the thoughts of the previous verses 67 and 69 where he suffered for both his sins and the sins of those against him. In verse 71 he says it was good that he had suffered. Are we, in faith, willing to recognize it is good that we have suffered from both our own sins and the sins of those against us. This suffering has caused us to learn the conditions of the LORD’s covenant. For ancient Israel that would be the covenant the LORD made with them through Moses. For us, it is the details of the New Covenant, the LORD made with us through Jesus Christ.
The LORD’s teachings (torah) are, or at least be to us, worth more than silver and gold. While we are not under the Mosaic covenant, there is much to learn from it. Even more so, we are called to treasure what Jesus has taught us through the Apostles in the Gospels and the Epistles. These teachings are life, light and the way of salvation revealed to us. We should treasure them above everything and everyone else.
Heavenly Father, grant that we may accept Your discipline and treasure it as it gives to us knowledge and understanding. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.