11-16-25 - God is Good and Does Good

Alright. Well, one other quick announcement. As you know, Thanksgiving is coming up. And if you do not have a place to go for Thanksgiving and would like a place to go, I encourage you to come celebrate Thanksgiving with me and my family. We will be celebrating on Thursday at 1PM.

We will have lots of food. You'll be welcome to bring anything, your favorite dish. Talk to me or Ruthian, but we would love to have you if, you're able to make it. So, I encourage you to reach out if you don't have a place to go, or if you have a place to go but my offer sounds better. There will be lots of good food.

Alright. So today our, sermon text is Psalm 119. We'll be looking at verses 35 through 72. And as we've mentioned previously, Psalm one nineteen is, acrostic. So it's a 175 verses and it's made up of 22 stanzas.

Each stanza is a letter stands for a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And in that stanza then, every the first word of every verse in Hebrew would the first word would begin with that letter. So today, we are on the tet section. So every word begins with the Hebrew letter tet. Out of the eight words in this section, the word is tov or tov.

All of you have probably heard of this, mazel tov. Right? Does anyone know what tov means? It's good. Right?

If you heard Mazel Tov, you know, it's like, congratulations, good luck. Right? Well, tav, everyone who's watched Fiddler on the Roof is like, yeah, I know that. Right? Tav.

Five verses begin with Tav. The main theme of this section is that God is good. This means that God does good. If he is good, all the actions that flow from him are also good. Of course, for us, this can be rather hard to see sometimes, because often we think our lives are very hard and difficult, and often they are hard and difficult.

But the psalmist teaches us in this Psalm that one of the ways that God shows us his goodness is actually through affliction, through the hard times. When we face hardship, we often want to doubt God's goodness and his care for us. But, and this is gonna be one of the themes throughout this Psalm, but this our afflictions are for our good. And so my hope this morning is to remind us of the essential goodness of God, the goodness of our afflictions, and the necessity for us to pursue God's word and to seek it in the midst of them. Now please stand for the reading of God's holy word.

This is God's word and it's eternally true. You have dealt well with your servant, oh Lord, according to your word. Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. You are good and do good.

Teach me your statutes. The arrogant have forged a lie against me. With all my heart, I will observe your precepts. Their heart is covered with fat, but I delight in your law. It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn your statutes.

The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Well, the psalmist opens up with kind of a crazy verse.

He declares that you have done well with your servant, oh Lord, according to your word. Now I wonder how many of us would be willing to stand with the psalmist and say, Lord, you have dealt well with your servant and in accord with your word. Probably, I would guess, it depends. Right? It would depend on what happened today or this week.

We'd have to catalog in our mind, what has God done for me recently? Then I'll be able to tell whether he's actually dealt well with me. But the psalmist says, you have dealt well with me. It's a declaration that takes faith, isn't it? When we're doing well and we're happy, it's very easy for us to feel as if God is dealing well with us.

When when we're accomplishing the goals that we have, when we are succeeding, when life is smooth sailing, we're at ease, then we're like, of course, I have God smile. He's dealing well with me. But what about when you lose your job? What about when you can't find a job? What about when your car breaks down?

What about when a loved one dies? Or what about in the midst of a child being particularly rebellious and frustrating to you? Is God dealing well with you when your country seems to be falling apart and divide division is rising? What about when you wake up on one of those days and every single thing that can go wrong seems to go wrong, and it's just one thing after another? Then is God dealing well with you?

What about when your family seems to be doing well and put together, and then you get an email and all seems to fall apart? And the the picture that you had is not true. Is God dealing well with you then? Is he dealing well with you according to his word? Is he being faithful

faithful then?

You may say, well, of course he's dealing well with me. I wouldn't I wouldn't want to be one of those people who would say he's not, because we know

the theological answer is, of

course, he's dealing well with us. But, I

mean, think about your theological answer is, of course, he's dealing well with us. But, I mean, think about your attitude. When you are just grumpy all day because things just aren't going the way they're supposed to do, who you blaming? Right? Adam is when God comes to me, he says, well, it's this woman that you gave me.

Right? He blames the woman, but then ultimately, it's working back to God. Right? Because God gave him the woman. And I think that's something we have to realize is that when we are being afflicted, whether it's on the low end of affliction or the high end of affliction,

not

there, if he's sovereign. And so our complaints are ultimately they're working back to him. And so but we're faced with this psalmist who says, you have dealt well with your servant. Well, how do we begin to understand that God has dealt well with you when often we don't seem to see it? Well, there's a lot of things and that's basically the question we're going to work through today.

First I want to say is that the godly judge providence not by how they feel, but by what scripture says. The godly judge God's providence for us not by what we feel but by what scripture says. And so the first thing that we have to get through our heads is that we may feel mistreated by God, and we may feel that he is being unfair in his dealings or not being well in his dealings, which is that word tov, good. Right? And we have to realize that our feelings are wrong.

Now, there's more comfort and there's more that we can work through, but there has to be this recognition that as we get to in the middle of the Psalm, it's going to tell us the title of the sermon, which is God is good and what he does is good. And so if we are feeling like God isn't good or what he's doing isn't good, we have to realize that the problem is not with God. It's with our perception. It's with our feelings. Now part of that comes to the fact that we're not very good judges of what's good for us.

And so you can think of this in in many different ways, but, if you gave your three year old the choice of what he thinks is good for him to eat, what would he eat every day? Yeah. You all, you know, mac and cheese, pizza, ice cream, cookies. Right? A three year old is no judge of what's good for him.

Part of the reason God gives us children is because it re it reveals in miniature our relationship to God. We think we know what's good for us. And so we're offended when God gives us the things that are actually good for us because we think they're not good for us. We want to judge God by the events of our lives. That's not biblical.

We are to judge events by God's word and what it says, not God by the events. So one of the things that we have to have is understanding and a right interpretation of what's going on. So notice he says, you have dealt well with your servant, oh Lord, according to your word. Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe your commandments. And so the psalmist says, you have dealt well with your servant.

And how does he know? Because God has done it according to his word, and he has the ability from God's word and the knowledge from God's word to be able to discern the events in his life and to see that God is dealing well and in accord with his word. Now, I have a few things I want to say about God dealing well with us. Few reasons. One is,

God cannot and will not do ill for

his child. If you are God's child, he will only do good to you. He is like the father. Remember, Jesus says, what good father, when his son asks for his child, he will only do good to you. He is like the father.

Remember Jesus says, what good father, when his son asks for bread, will give him a stone or fish will give him a snake? If then you being evil fathers, how much more will your good father in heaven give you good things? Hebrews twelve six through 10. Listen to the words of this passage and how often God says the word son. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.

He scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good so that we may share in his holiness. And so when we go through affliction, when we go through difficulties, it's not punitive. Christ died for our sins.

And what does that mean? It means that he took the punishment for our sins onto himself. He paid the penalty. So when we are disciplined by God, it's not punitive. He's not exacting payment for our sins, because it's already been paid.

It doesn't have to be double paid. And what good would our payment do anyways? Rather, when the Lord disciplines his children, it's as a father who wants to teach and refine his children. It's not for revenge. Though it feels a heavy hand, what it is, it's medicine.

It's medicine to bring us healing. And so we have to understand that God dealing well with us does include affliction, but it is a teaching and refining. It's not retributed retributive. It's not for punishment. We're gonna continue.

We'll be talking about that more, but I also wanna say is the next thing that it says here is that it's according to your word. Psalm 119 verse 49 says, remember the word to your servant in which you have made me hope. John sixteen thirty three says, these things I have spoken to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have what? Trouble, tribulation.

But take courage, I have overcome the world. Where did Jesus promise an easy life to us? Where in scripture has God said you'll be living easy? God blesses us. He's very kind.

But but there is a reality too. When our lives are hard, we can't come to God and say, you never said I would have a hard life if I followed you. And so when he says Jesus that God has dealt well with his servant according to his word, he's saying God's faithful. And God hasn't done anything that he hasn't said he would do in his word. And so and and and if you were to search this concept of according to your word, there would be so many verses that come up in scripture where again and again the psalmist and God's people are calling out to God to act according to his word.

It is how God does. And so, again, if we want to understand how God's dealing well with us or how he's dealing with us, we have to view our lives through the lens of his work. Where we get off kilter is when we begin to view our lives through how we think we should be treated. How what we think is good for us. Like like the little kid who just wants to eat mac and cheese.

Right? And not the good mac and cheese his mom makes, but the box kind. Right? The other thing that we have to keep in mind when we're thinking about this and God dealing well with us, is we have to remember the end goal. Dave just preached through these verses not too long ago.

Deuteronomy eight fifteen through 16. This is Moses saying, he led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its fiery serpents, scorpions, thirsty ground where there was no water. He brought water for you out of the rock of Flint. In the wilderness, he fed you manna, which your fathers did not know. And what does he say?

That he might humble you, that he might test you to do good for you in the end. To do good for you in the end. All those afflictions were brought through for what purpose? That he might do good to you in the end. Romans eight twenty eight says, and we know that God causes all things to work together for the good for those who who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.

So when he says that God has dealt well with him, we keep in mind that God deals with us as sons. That his discipline is not punitive, but fatherly. That God's dealt with you well because he's dealing with you according to the promises that he has made. And that God always acts in line with what he has promised. And that the good might not be evident yet, but it will be brought about in the end.

It will come to fruition. Commandments. And again, it can be so hard for us to see God's dealing with us as being good. And that's why we must be students of scripture. We have to be taught good discernment.

We have to be taught good judgment. And to be discerning, to make good judgments, we have to have knowledge. And we will not be able to understand God's goodness to us if we're blind to his word, if we don't read his word. And so when the psalmist says that, teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments, this is a prayer we ought to all be praying. I've said this before, but when we open our Bibles, the first thing we must do or we ought to do is pray.

Pray. Pray that God would reveal himself to us. We ought not to ever read the Bible without seeking God to teach us. Because how will you understand? How will you know what God is teaching if you do not call on him to reveal and to illuminate his word to you?

And how will you make sense of how God's dealing with you if you do not understand his word? And how will you know if he's being faithful to his promises if you don't know his promises? And no amount of human learning will be able to do this. Right? There are people who know the Bible better than I do, and who will know the Bible better than I'll ever know the Bible, but do not know God's word.

They've not submitted to it. Sure, they can name chapters and verses and repeat section after section of scripture. And yet, the truth of it has never penetrated their hearts. So they actually have some knowledge, but no discernment, no judgment. We will only be able to understand God's providences towards us if we know his word and are given discernment by him.

So this is a prayer we ought to be praying. Teach me good discernment and knowledge. Wisdom comes from God. There's a story I read about, and it was one of the, I think it was a Puritan or reformer. I can't remember.

And he was having a debate, and he was taking notes during the debate. And so one of his friends came up afterwards and was like, hey, can I see your notes? Because he's assuming during the debate that he must have been jotting down you know, this guy made this argument, refute this statement, he had an idea for a rebuttal, all those things. Right? And he looks at the notes and it's like, Lord, give me light.

Lord, give me understanding. Give me discernment. How do I answer this? He he wasn't writing down all those. He was calling on God in the very moment to give him understanding and discernment.

In '67, he says, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. Well, that's a sobering verse, isn't it? Why does the three year old, to go back to the analogy, why would the young child want ice cream every day? Yeah. Because it tastes good.

It tastes good. Right? Like, who who doesn't wanna eat ice cream all the time? Or whatever your food of choice is. Right?

Like, it just tastes good. It's it's it's good. Right? And, but they have no concept of what's nutritious, valuable. And this is us, isn't it?

Who doesn't want an easy life? Who's like, sign me up for affliction and loss. Sign me up for persecution. The psalmist is like, I had a good life. I had a easy.

And you know what? I was headed to destruction. I was going astray. I was prone to wander. But affliction brought him back.

When he was afflicted, he learned to keep God's way. And so we don't know what's good for us, and it's why it's very dangerous to judge God. Because we think this isn't good for us. And yet, the very hardship and affliction that we complain about may be the very reason we're talking to God. Yeah.

We're so quick to judge God, and to think we know what is good, and what we need. We think that an easy life, of course, will grow if our life's easy. You know? If I wasn't going through affliction, of course, I'd be diligent to read my Bible and pray. But we aren't.

We don't. Take stock of your own life, of the easiest times of the quiet places. They begin so sweet, but where do they end? And so if you can't stay the course when your life's easy your way, the way you want it to be, then don't be so quick to judge God when he brings you back in his way. Maybe God is like a good father who knows what we need better than we know what we need.

And so we ought to trust him like a child has to trust his parent with the food that he eats. Affliction is so hard, but it teaches us so much. Think about what we just read in Hosea. In verse six, he says, as they had their pasture, they became satisfied. And being satisfied, their heart became proud.

Therefore, they forgot me. Easy, relaxing times are not healthy for us. They Easy relaxing times are not healthy for us. They cause us to relax. They cause us to lose our guard.

It's like when you're playing with a dog. Right? And you're pulling on the rope, and the dog turn pulls hard. And then you just give slack for just a second. The dog lets his guard down and you yank it right out of their mouth.

That's us. When there's tension, we're on guard. We fight. But when the affliction ceases, how long do we stay on guard? How quickly do we go and wander and do our own thing?

How quickly, when life is easy, do we become secure and self reliant? We forget to pray. And it doesn't mean that we go and we run and commit hot sins of the flesh, the grosser sins. Rather, I think it means that often we just insensibly, by small degrees, begin to slip back into our sins, to begin to let go go of our discipline, to begin to pursue God less and less and less. It's like playing on the beach.

How many of you have been to the ocean and you set up camp? You have your blanket and your chairs and all your stuff on it, and you go out in the water and you're playing. And then all of a sudden you look back towards your stuff and it's a quarter mile down the beach. And you go, how did I never knew I was moving down the beach. I didn't mean to move down the beach, but it's that pole of the ocean.

And how much of that is us when life's easy and simple? We're not on guard. We're not keeping our eyes fixed on Christ. And all of a sudden, we're cold. Thomas Mann says that affliction is good for us for five it has five functions, five reasons why it's good for us.

He says, one, that affliction is a bridle. It's God's bridle. It keeps us from excessive ranging. That that the hardship pulls us up short, stops us from going too far away. He says affliction is as a hedge.

He hedges up our way with thorns. This is also from Hosea. He hedges up our way with thorns so that we may not find our former paths of sin. So that we might not find the former paths of sin. You think about that, like, how often you begin to let things go in your life, you begin to wander down a path that is going to lead it to destruction in ways that you have gone before, and then the Lord pours out affliction on you, and it saves you from retrotting wicked paths.

Affliction is a goad. It spurs us to duty. It pricks us. It makes us wake up. He says affliction is a furnace.

How many times does scripture describe these difficulties and the trials and temptations as a furnace? You know, the that that, silver and gold has plenty of impurities. You know, how many of us would actually recognize gold in its raw impure state? You know? It doesn't come out of the ground just shiny and pure.

It has to be put into a furnace. And what happens is the impurities burn up faster than the purities. Right? Every once in a while, I'll joke around with my kids. They'll say, well, dad, does this, will that burn?

I say, well, everything will burn if you get it hot enough. Right? Gold burns at a higher temperature than the impurities, and so you you burn it, you melt it, you burn up the impurities and preserve the refined gold. And the reason that is is to give us an illustration of what our lives are like. God's people are gold, but very unformed, un shaped, covered in dross and impurities.

And he wants a higher karat gold. So he puts you through afflictions to remove all the dross, to make us beautiful. It's kinda like we talked in Sunday school, that we count all these things as loss. The Lord purifies of us all these different things. And the main way that he purifies us is through affliction, through fire.

Affliction is a schoolmaster. If you read the Puritans and the reformers and these men, this is what they constantly are talking about, God's school of affliction. That God uses these hard things to teach us. To do what? Well, if we're using affliction properly, if we're a Christian, when we're afflicted, what it does is it drives us to pray.

Because we can't make sense of it. We don't think it's fair. It's hard. It's hard. And so it drives us to call out to the one who he knows in charge.

Repent, doesn't it? When we can, you know, how much of our suffering is brought about by our own sin? And we figure it out, and then what do we want should we do? It's like, you finally figure out the reason your hand hurts is because you're holding on to a hot potato. It's like, death, death, throw it away.

Get rid of it. And how affliction can give us that clarity of sight to see what draws we're holding on to and say, let's get rid of it. Let's repent. If security makes us proud, then affliction makes us humble, doesn't it? God's dealing well with us, but we think we deserve something, so he might not be dealing well with us.

So when we're afflicted, then the Lord gives us eyes to see what we really deserve. That ought to give us humility. Affliction ought to be driving us to the word of God. Because as we said earlier, the only way to actually understand our situation is to understand God's word. God's word is the thing that will give us light into the troubles and the afflictions that we're facing.

He's the architect. He's the author. He's the sovereign king. And so his word is the key to trusting in him and to understanding. Affliction helps us to become simpler in our walk and more obedient in our walk, and to turn to him.

The idea then is that affliction awakens us. It spurs our conscience. It becomes quickened to our sins so that we can repent, so that we will be humbled, so that we are forced to rely on God and not on ourselves. Ease and prosperity are so so dangerous to us. But affliction, affliction under God's hand has the ability to cause us to grow greatly and to work good in our lives.

Don't waste your affliction. Draw close to God. Think about Job. I mean, think about Job and how Job thought he knew God before he was afflicted, but Job knew God after he was afflicted. The closeness and the unity, the understanding that he had of God's ways.

The psalmist goes on and he says, you are good and do good. Teach me your statutes. When this, I think, is one of the sweetest verses in scripture. It's sort of the foundation of this whole psalm. God is good.

God does good. They they're connected. They have to be connected. If God is good, then all he does has to be good. If what God does isn't good, then God couldn't be good.

Then God couldn't be good. Exodus 30 says something amazing. He says, this is Moses going up on the mountain, right? And Moses is like, God, show me yourself. So the Lord reveals himself.

And we think, you know, how amazing would have been to be on the mountain. But just as incredible as the words that Moses left, the testimony he left, and this is what God says. And he said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. And God is essentially good.

When he he sort of sums up his nature and who he is by saying, my goodness will pass before you. And then he breaks it out into talking about, you know, his graciousness, his compassion, his loving kindness. Right? But God is good. And this is something that we need to cling to with both hands.

We may not understand. Right? We don't understand why we have to eat the vegetables, why we have to go through the affliction. And yet, if God is good, then we trust in him. And we can wrestle with him, as the psalmist again and again does, because he doesn't understand why all these things.

You know, you read Psalm 73, and it's like, Lord, I'm your I'm your man, and but why do the wicked prosper? Why is it so difficult for me and the wicked prosper? But then he uses God's word to look ahead and see the end of the wicked. So he trusts God. He learns to trust God and say, you're good.

I may not understand all the affliction that I go through, but you're good. Therefore, what you do is good and I will trust in you. The other thing we have to remember in this is God's greatest expression of love towards us. So while we were yet sinners, what? Christ came.

He died. He paid the penalty. How dare we how dare we accuse God of not dealing well with us when he sent Christ to die for us? When we think that God doesn't deal well with us, it's because we we zoom in too close, and we look at the current situation, and we forget all of the fast past faithfulness of God and we forget all the promises of the future faithfulness of God. And we forget to look at the end for which he afflicts us.

And so we must meditate and remember that God is good and that he sent the greatest expression of that is that Christ came and died for us and rose again. And if we hold on to that truth, though we may not have clarity in the difficult times and the difficult afflictions, that will lend us a rock to be anchored to. To pray, God, you are good, and all you do is good. Teach me your statutes. Because often his laws don't seem good to us, So we have to be taught based on the promise that he's good.

We have to move on. The arrogant have forged a lie against me. With all my heart, I have will observe your precepts. Their heart is covered with fat, but I delight in your law. This is important.

You think about Daniel. Right? If Daniel is the author of this Psalm, it could hearken back to Daniel's time, where Daniel is known as a godly man. And what do the wicked men decide to do? We need to tear down Daniel.

So they look, but they can't find any faults. Faults. So they make up a law. They forge a lie. We'll create a law specifically to bring down Daniel.

But Daniel, does he fear when the wicked rise against him making lies? No. Daniel opens his window and prays in front of the whole city. He doesn't even decide, well, I'll still pray to God, but I'll do it in a closet. He does it in front of an open window.

And you know Daniel is one of the highest rulers in the land. He's not living in a house in a secluded area. And they see. Daniel's opposed to the proud arrogant men, the men who want to keep him from following God. We learn a few things about these wicked men.

Right? They hate goodness. They hate God. And we have this weird thing. It says their hearts are covered in fat.

Now this doesn't mean that they're overweight. It has more of the idea that they are insulated. They're stupid. They're dull. They're unfeeling.

These men do not feel God's correction. They cannot perceive God's warnings. They're self secure. There's no fear of God before their eyes. They have no love of God's word.

This is in contrast to Daniel or the righteous man. Right? The righteous man obeys and delights in the word of God, and he is responsive to God's discipline and God's corrections. And so when the affliction comes, he seeks God's word to discern God's goodness in it, to discern what he needs to repent of, to discern how he needs to grow closer to God. He looks for those things.

The stupid, wicked man is dull. He doesn't feel the, the, discipline of God. He ignores said that the thing that scares him the most is when his heart doesn't feel. Feeling the affliction, feeling the pain of God's discipline, he's like, that's not the thing that bothers me. That's a sign of life.

It's when I'm insensitive to it, when my heart's covered with fat. That's when we're in danger. May the Lord heap more affliction on us at that point to bring us back. The righteous man, when the wicked are forging lies against him, does what? Does he get angry?

Does he seek revenge? Does he grow bitter? No. He obeys God more. He shows greater integrity.

That's the godly man's response to affliction. Man and again, he says, the difference between the wicked man and the righteous man is how they respond to the word of God. So when we're afflicted, how do we respond? You are good and all you do is good. You have dealt well with me, or do we vile God?

It is good for me that I was afflicted that I may learn your statutes. Brothers and sisters, this is the mindset of a Christian. We should be able to say this as Christians. Lord willing, we are given the grace to be able to say this as Christians. May we be able to say it in the midst of our suffering.

Affliction is not good in of itself. It's painful and it's unwelcome, but it becomes good because of the effects that it has upon us. Affliction rightly used drives us to rely on God. It causes us to turn to God and begin to learn more of God. It causes us to seek answers from his throne.

Throne. We find refreshment and understanding in God's word. We learn better in hardship. Affliction makes it harder for us to forget the lessons of God. Affliction teaches us to pray.

Affliction teaches us to rely on the promises of God in a way that prosperity never can, because we cling to it, because we know that's all we have. So affliction is good for us. And brothers and sisters, I believe that this is one of the hardest lessons that a Christian can learn. We all think that we'll grow and remain faithful when things are easy, when we're wealthy, when we aren't in hardship. But that's not true.

In ease we drift. It's an affliction that we're purified and drawn close to God. And so it takes an incredible amount of maturity and faith to be say with the psalmist that it was good for me that I was afflicted. Have you ever ever said that? Have you thought that?

Have you thought, Lord, this great affliction is worth it because I would not know you or love you as much as I do if you had not put me through it? It. And then he wraps it up by saying, the the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. This is why affliction's worth it. This is why affliction is good for us, because knowing God and knowing his law is better than anything else for you.

There is nothing deeper. There is nothing better. There is nothing more holy. There is nothing more essential for us than to know God and to know his word. God's word feeds our eternal souls, not just our bodies.

God's law lasts forever. God's law can never be stolen or taken from you. If you hide God's word in your heart, you have it. No man can take it. Riches can never comfort your wounded conscience.

They're cold. God's words can. Riches and gold will never answer your temptations. They'll never help you in affliction. Your gold can never comfort you at death, but God's word can answer the temptation.

God's word can be near to you in every affliction and give comfort, more comfort than anything else. And in death, God's word will bring comfort and clarity and hope that goes beyond the grave. Ease gives us pride. God's word gives us humility and hope. And affliction well used drives us to God's word.

And so the greatest hope, the greatest wealth, the greatest riches we can have is by pursuing God. And our hearts are so darkened by sin and so hardened that we have to have the loving discipline of our God, our father, to give us affliction to drive us to him. Because without it, we'll just be content with mud pies. Well, we need to end, but I want to remind you that God has not called us to go through anything greater than what Christ did. If Christ if God has not dealt well with you, then he's not dealt well with Christ.

Our afflictions, in some wild way fill up what was lacking is what Paul says. That God honors and builds our afflictions to such a way that they they contribute glory to the affliction that Christ suffered. It's a wild thing. It should give us hope. We should remember to cling to the goodness of God because God is not a capricious father.

So often I think we think that. If we're too happy, God's just gonna slap us down. But we have to remember that everything God does to us is for our good, for his glory and to bring about a greater glory and hope within us. Because God is good, our affliction is used for for our good. His word interprets that to us.

And we can say with the psalmist, hopefully not only after affliction, but during it, that you have dealt well with your servant takes faith, takes hope. Let's pray.