Sermon Tone Analysis

*How to Pray When in Difficulties (Or How to Pray in Bad Times to a Good God)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist on December 7, 2008/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

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Psalm 119:65-72 (NASB95) 65 You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word.

66 Teach me good discernment and knowledge, For I believe in Your commandments.

67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word.

68 You are good and do good; Teach me Your statutes.

69 The arrogant have forged a lie against me; With all /my /heart I will observe Your precepts.

70 Their heart is covered with fat, /But /I delight in Your law.

71 It is good for me that I was afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.

72 The law of Your mouth is better to me Than thousands of gold and silver /pieces./

Suffering and bad times and affliction and trials drive a true believer to his or her knees more than most other times, but /how/ should we then pray?

What we pray for, and the content of our prayer requests and personal prayers, says something about our heart and trust and spiritual maturity.

Psalm 119:65-72 gives us a God-inspired pattern for how to pray in life’s difficulties

 

Praying biblically, with a passage of Scripture open, is one of the best ways to pray.

Our prayer requests and prayer life will be so much more informed and conformed to /God’s will/ if they come out of /God’s Word/.

As I interact with hurting people lately, I’ve been trying to apply praying these truths to be true in their lives and in mine.

/This passage reveals for us at least 4 ways to pray in difficulties:/

*1.      **Lord, you are so good, though I’m so undeserving (v.

65)*

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Notice this God-centered humble first line – the focus of this undeserving servant is clearly on the Lord: 4 references in 1 verse:

65 *You* have dealt well with *Your* servant, *O Lord*, according to *Your* word.

He begins with the Lord, which is always a good place to start, and here he starts with the goodness of the Lord.

Actually the first word in the Hebrew text is “good” not only in this verse, but in five of the verses in this brief section.

The literal Heb word order is

v. 65 “GOOD you do ~/ have done to your servant” i.e., /well/

v. 66 “GOOD discernment and knowledge, teach me”

v. 68 “GOOD you are, and are doing GOOD”

v. 71 “GOOD for me it is to be afflicted”

v. 72 “GOOD is the law of your mouth to me” i.e., /better/

 

The word “affliction” appears 2x in this passage (v.

67, 71) but it’s not the theme of this section.

The focus is really on the word “good” and how to pray to our “good” God in affliction.

The Hebrew root word for “good” actually appears 3x more than the word for “affliction,” a total of 6x in 8 vss (Hebrew /tov ~/ tob/).

So both exegetically and experientially, both statistically and practically, affliction is over-powered by the Lord’s goodness.

The NIV translates it as a request for God to do good in v. 65, but I think it’s better to go with the other translations which look back on what God has done, doing good or well to us, and of course the most familiar Psalm closes with forward looking future-grace trust /surely *goodness *and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…/

Here he begins by acknowledging what we do not always see when in difficulty, how *good* God is and has been to us – when we think rightly and understand what we actually deserve (God’s wrath) it should actually be remarkable to us that we haven’t had /more difficulty/!

God has treated us so well even though we are so undeserving.

We can become so focused on how we think things should be different in our life that we lose the focus of God’s goodness and we lose the perspective of who God is and who we are, undeserving servants.

Spurgeon pointed out the connection in context to the prior verse: ‘From the universal goodness of God in nature, in Ps 119:64, it is an easy and pleasant step to a confession of the Lord's uniform goodness to ourselves personally.

It is something [amazing] that God has dealt /at all/ with such insignificant and undeserving beings as we are, and it is far more that he has dealt /well/ with us, and /so /well, so /wondrously/ well … He is the best of Masters; [it’s to] a very unworthy and incapable servant that he has acted [so] blessedly: doesn’t this cause us to delight in his service more and more?

/We/ can’t say that /we have dealt well/ with our Master; for when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants; but as for our Lord, he has given us light work, large maintenance, loving encouragement, and liberal wages.’[1]

Biblical Counselor Jay Adams said it this way: ‘Proofs of God’s goodness are everywhere.

The problem is that “Christless eyes” do not see them.

Even Christians see far too little.

That is because they don’t think rightly; they don’t look for evidence of God’s mercy …That God doesn’t eliminate every wicked person when he commits sin is a mercy to him, giving him space for repentance … Christians who learn to see God’s hand of goodness and mercy all around them every day and hour are rarely those who get depressed, rarely those who complain, rarely those who are a sucker for some false belief …The last line [Ps 119:64] is significant.

It tells you what to say when the counselee tells you, “Well, I just have a hard time seeing such things.”

Your reply?

[read end of v. 64] “Ask God to *teach you His statutes *so that by means of them you may be able to have your eyes opened.’[2]

And ‘if a counselee reads this verse, and ‘they can’t give the same witness to their God – that [God] does as He said He would in the Bible [doing good to him] – one of at least two things is wrong.

Either the counselee hasn’t the eyes to see, or he isn’t eligible for that goodness (i.e., he isn’t a genuine *servant *of God).’[3]

There’s the great promise of Romans 8:28 (“God works all things together for good”) but the promise does not apply to unbelievers – it is only for “those who love God, those who are called according to His purpose.”

As a modern song says it, for those in relationship with God: /God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, He’s so good to me/.

This goodness to God’s true children is what Psalms often appeal to in praying to their heavenly Father:

 

Psalm 25:7 (NASB95) 7 Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; According to Your lovingkindness remember me, *For Your goodness’ sake, O Lord.*

Psalm 86:5 (NASB95) 5 For You, Lord, are *good*, and ready to forgive, And abundant in lovingkindness to all who call upon You.

In Psalm 119:17, he prayed /Deal bountifully with Your servant that I may live and keep your Word, /and now in our text in verse 65 it is answered: /You have dealt well with Your servant, O LORD, according to Your word.

/God deals bountifully well with His lowly servants according to His Word; so that we can exclaim (like Psalm 115:1) “not to us but to Your name be glory!”

We should pray, Lord you are so good to me, though I’m so undeserving.

God is good, all the time, God is good; but we need to take our eyes off ourselves to see that, to perceive it and then to praise God for it.

We need to look back on what God has done, we need to quit looking down at the dirt around us and look up and see the glorious goodness of God.

Verse 68 says God /is/ good and doing good.

That’s His very character, His visible glory and essence.

Exodus 33:18-34:6 Then Moses said, “I pray You, *show me Your glory*!” 19 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.”

20 But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” 21 Then the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand /there /on the rock; 22 and it will come about, *while My glory is passing by*, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed … *34:6* Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, *compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness* …

 

God’s goodness is His very glorious nature; compassionate, loving, gracious.

The very goodness of God and His dealings is seen in the very beginning of the Bible: As God creates the world and all its creatures, He repeatedly pronounces it good, and finally /very good/.

It is God’s very nature to be good and do good, and it should be the very nature of someone saved by His good grace to pray thankfully “/Lord, you are so good though I am so undeserving./”

Thank you, Lord.

Let’s not be like the Israelites who received so much goodness from God, and were complainers and grumblers.

Bridges wrote: 'What!

shall I, who am "called out of darkness into marvellous light"—shall I, who am rescued from slavery and death, and brought to a glorious state of liberty and life, complain?

Shall I, who have been redeemed at so great a price, and who have a right to "all the promises of God in Christ Jesus" (2 Cor 1:20), and who am now an "heir of God, and joint heir with Christ" (Rom 8:17), murmur at my Father's will?

… that my heart should prove so foolish, so weak, so ungrateful!

Lord!

I would acknowledge with thankfulness, and yet with humiliation, /You have dealt well with Your servant, according unto Your word/./'/

But how sinfully do we neglect these honourable and cheering acknowledgments!”[4]

 

/We should pray #1 Lord you’re so good though I’m so undeserving.

Secondly … /

*2.      **Lord, give me wisdom to apply Your Word in this situation (v.

66-67)*

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66 Teach me good discernment and knowledge, For I believe in Your commandments.

In some ways this verse is parallel to James 1:5 which says on the heels of talking about trials and the good work God produces in them, James says “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.”

Our typical prayer request is for God to remove the trial, but it says we should pray for wisdom to apply God’s Word /in the trial!

/God sends trials our way to test us, James also tells us, and God has good purposes in them as we’ll see later, and there’s something He wants to teach us in them.

But we short-change what God desires to teach us if we are only focused on getting out and not learning what God wants us to learn.

We need to pray /teach me /like this verse, and we need to pray with an open Bible, studying hard and seeking hard after good judgment and knowledge or wisdom to find principles that apply, and to personally apply them.

This is an important prayer.

We need to study to know the specific commands and principles in God’s Word that apply to our daily decision-making, and believe in them, and we also need the discernment, knowledge, wisdom to know /how to obey and apply/ those truths to our specific situation.

It’s not merely praying for information, it’s praying for God’s insight for application.

*67 **Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word.*

Affliction may not be our preferred method for God to teach us, but it is often the one we need.

I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said pain is God’s megaphone to get the attention of sinners.

Notice this prayer is not for a life free of affliction; his focus is on keeping God’s word /in affliction, /and he recognizes in fact he keeps it /because of affliction, /which he strayed without/.

/

 

The going astray is a participle in the grammar, suggesting he viewed his prior experience of wandering as his characteristic pattern.

Verse 176: /I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant …/

We all like sheep go astray continually, each of us turn to our own way repeatedly, unless and until the Suffering Messiah of Isaiah 53 takes away our sin onto Himself, and until the Good Shepherd of Psalm 23 applies the rod and the staff that comforts us straying sheep.

His afflictions comfort us even as we walk through dark valleys, because we know they are ultimately for our good if we are truly His sheep.

It’s when believers are in the fiery furnace that they see most vividly that the Lord is with them, as even Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were able to go through the flames heated 7x, protected by a fourth One who looked like a Son of Man, the Lord Himself.

He didn’t in that case protect them /from /the fire, He protected them /through /the fire, as He often does.

It took affliction before the straying prodigal son returned.

The season of trial is often the sanctified season of revival.