WEBVTT 00:00:00.460 --> 00:00:05.480 We're in Psalm 119, verses 81 to 88, Calf. 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:14.359 Let me read it out loud for us. 00:00:18.300 --> 00:00:21.719 My soul longs for your salvation. 00:00:22.580 --> 00:00:24.240 I hope in your word. 00:00:25.719 --> 00:00:28.660 My eyes long for your promise. 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.619 I ask, when will you comfort me? 00:00:34.179 --> 00:00:39.600 For I become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes. 00:00:40.820 --> 00:00:43.179 How long must your servant endure? 00:00:44.259 --> 00:00:46.899 When will you judge those who persecute me? 00:00:48.039 --> 00:00:50.480 The insolent have dug pitfalls for me. 00:00:50.480 --> 00:00:52.920 They do not live according to your law. 00:00:53.480 --> 00:00:55.379 All your commandments are sure. 00:00:55.840 --> 00:00:57.579 They persecute me with falsehood. 00:00:58.240 --> 00:00:58.780 Help me. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:02.740 They have almost made an end of me on earth. 00:01:03.259 --> 00:01:05.680 But I have not forsaken your precepts. 00:01:06.180 --> 00:01:08.439 In your steadfast love, give me life. 00:01:09.500 --> 00:01:12.379 That I may keep the testimonies of your mouth. 00:01:12.379 --> 00:01:21.719 Let me brief this evening because this recovers a lot of the themes that we've been looking at over the last two weeks. 00:01:22.799 --> 00:01:28.539 And here, this psalm is characterized by longing for God. 00:01:28.540 --> 00:01:31.300 Twice, it mentions the word long. 00:01:31.300 --> 00:01:33.640 Verse 81 and again in verse 82. 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:40.700 And the context seems to be some kind of persecution, affliction, assault by the enemy. 00:01:41.560 --> 00:01:46.060 The word persecution occurs twice as well in verses 84 and 86. 00:01:46.060 --> 00:01:49.680 It seems like the psalmist is in pretty desperate straits. 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:59.400 He describes his condition like this in very vivid imagery in verse 83. 00:02:00.060 --> 00:02:00.280 It says, 00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:03.159 For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke. 00:02:04.299 --> 00:02:05.820 And I have not forgotten your statutes. 00:02:05.819 --> 00:02:08.699 This is normally a wineskin. 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:14.019 It contains wine but also other forms of drink in this day and age. 00:02:14.020 --> 00:02:21.760 But when it's regularly used, it's moist, you know, plump, it's pliable, flexible. 00:02:22.500 --> 00:02:28.240 But when you're not using it, people would hang it on the rafters above the hearth to dry, you know, 00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:31.439 so that the smoke and the heat from the furnace goes up to it. 00:02:32.120 --> 00:02:39.680 And if it's not used for a long time, in disuse it becomes very dry, kind of, you know, 00:02:39.680 --> 00:02:43.060 kind of crusted or even rigid. 00:02:43.900 --> 00:02:49.159 And it's a great picture of kind of your life or being sapped from you, 00:02:49.740 --> 00:02:57.560 a picture of dryness, of being longing and waiting for, you know, water or, you know, wine. 00:02:58.280 --> 00:03:01.500 And so he describes his life that way. 00:03:01.879 --> 00:03:04.560 I have become like a wineskin in the smoke. 00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:08.860 However, even then, he has not forgotten God's statutes. 00:03:08.860 --> 00:03:13.180 He puts it very literally later in verse 87, very bluntly, 00:03:13.340 --> 00:03:15.840 that they have almost made an end of me on earth. 00:03:17.240 --> 00:03:18.960 And again, he says still, 00:03:19.660 --> 00:03:22.860 but I have not forsaken your precepts. 00:03:24.040 --> 00:03:29.380 So this, I don't know what exactly it is. 00:03:30.040 --> 00:03:34.300 They're slandering him, his enemies, because he says in verse 86, 00:03:34.380 --> 00:03:36.020 they persecute me with falsehood. 00:03:36.560 --> 00:03:38.260 But it's pretty intense. 00:03:38.259 --> 00:03:41.679 He's literally at the end of his rope. 00:03:42.419 --> 00:03:43.679 He's at the end of his life. 00:03:43.859 --> 00:03:45.519 He feels like he's about to die. 00:03:46.340 --> 00:03:49.120 And out of that desperate place, 00:03:49.199 --> 00:03:51.919 he asks God these heart-wrenching questions in verse 82. 00:03:52.340 --> 00:03:53.579 When will you comfort me? 00:03:53.580 --> 00:03:57.360 How long must your servant endure? 00:03:58.620 --> 00:04:00.980 When will you judge those who persecute me? 00:04:02.620 --> 00:04:05.480 But even as he's asking these questions through it all, 00:04:05.620 --> 00:04:10.700 he insists on keeping God's promise, keeping God's laws. 00:04:11.180 --> 00:04:12.760 Yet I have not forgotten your statutes. 00:04:12.860 --> 00:04:14.360 I have not forsaken your precepts. 00:04:14.939 --> 00:04:17.160 This is a good lesson for us. 00:04:17.160 --> 00:04:24.580 I mean, it's really hard to imagine that kind of suffering, persecution. 00:04:25.520 --> 00:04:29.960 I mean, maybe believers in a place like Algeria that we've been praying for for the month of September, 00:04:30.340 --> 00:04:34.240 you know, know what it's like to be persecuted in this way and cry out with such longing. 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:39.480 I think we experienced it in a much smaller degree, if at all. 00:04:40.420 --> 00:04:49.860 And, I mean, it's almost humorous for me to even mention this, 00:04:50.340 --> 00:04:53.100 but, like, my week's been kind of rough. 00:04:53.100 --> 00:05:00.840 And we had a, I mean, a long week last week, 00:05:00.960 --> 00:05:02.640 and then on Sunday we were pretty exhausted. 00:05:03.080 --> 00:05:06.640 We didn't even go to the Rift Fest because we've been going for the last three years. 00:05:07.580 --> 00:05:14.220 And then on Monday, Hannah came down with, like, some kind of stomach flu. 00:05:15.340 --> 00:05:20.500 So she was literally bedridden for, I think, maybe, like, 20 hours of the day. 00:05:20.500 --> 00:05:27.839 And then it's, like, throwing up and not able to do anything. 00:05:29.879 --> 00:05:38.540 And then I thought, and then Inji gets it the next day. 00:05:39.019 --> 00:05:39.160 Yeah. 00:05:39.339 --> 00:05:43.480 And then Inji starts throwing up and then has a diarrhea. 00:05:44.139 --> 00:05:46.459 And I'm like, oh, at least Ine and I are okay, you know. 00:05:46.519 --> 00:05:49.220 And then I take Ine to school on Tuesday. 00:05:49.220 --> 00:05:52.560 And then I get a call from the school nurse saying that she has a fever. 00:05:53.260 --> 00:05:54.540 And that's why I need to go pick her up. 00:05:54.760 --> 00:05:55.760 And then come back. 00:05:56.340 --> 00:05:58.560 And then, like, I'm trying to do grocery shopping or whatever. 00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:00.380 And then Inji throws up on my shoulders. 00:06:00.780 --> 00:06:04.160 And I have to clean it up, you know, and, like, at the grocery store. 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:06.600 And it's, like, it was just one of those weeks, you know. 00:06:06.680 --> 00:06:08.800 It's, like, I have hardly had time to do anything. 00:06:09.060 --> 00:06:11.400 I hardly had time to prepare for the sermon. 00:06:11.399 --> 00:06:16.639 And then, like, and also, it's not even just the physically, physical trials of it. 00:06:17.060 --> 00:06:20.060 But spiritually, like, it becomes harder. 00:06:20.239 --> 00:06:25.179 Like, I mean, it will totally ruin my rhythm for, you know, prayer and in the morning. 00:06:25.180 --> 00:06:33.100 And, like, I'm just, and I'm more irritable, you know, when all these things are happening. 00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:38.160 It's hard to be patient with kids when you're doing all these things for them. 00:06:38.220 --> 00:06:45.180 And they're totally oblivious to your benevolence and are complaining and whining and crying for every little thing. 00:06:45.180 --> 00:06:48.319 And then you're just, like, how long, oh, Lord, right? 00:06:49.660 --> 00:06:53.160 I mean, it's so trivial in comparison to what the psalmist is going through. 00:06:53.500 --> 00:06:55.500 But we all go through things like that in life. 00:06:55.759 --> 00:07:05.660 And I think it's, but God gives us those trials, as we know from other places in Scripture, to test us, to prove the genuineness of our faith, right? 00:07:06.620 --> 00:07:07.720 And that's the thing. 00:07:07.899 --> 00:07:10.660 It's in this stanza, the answer to his prayers don't come. 00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:14.259 But the fact that he's praying shows that he's persevering in faith. 00:07:14.259 --> 00:07:16.839 He's waiting on the Lord through all these things. 00:07:18.159 --> 00:07:20.339 And in 1 Peter 1, 6-7, it says, 00:07:20.459 --> 00:07:25.539 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 00:07:25.939 --> 00:07:31.019 so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, 00:07:31.420 --> 00:07:35.959 may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 00:07:36.519 --> 00:07:43.860 So what he's saying there is when, just like a gold, you know, when it's tested through a fire, you know that it's real gold. 00:07:44.259 --> 00:07:45.819 It's not fool's gold. 00:07:46.339 --> 00:07:52.300 A person's faith, its genuineness is proven when you endure through trials and you still have faith. 00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:56.719 That means with every trial, we have greater assurance of salvation, right? 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:01.659 Because every time we go through another one, we realize, no, we have real faith. 00:08:01.899 --> 00:08:04.599 God's preserved us and we're going to make it to the end. 00:08:04.600 --> 00:08:08.180 And this psalmist is experiencing that. 00:08:08.379 --> 00:08:11.920 He feels like he's at the end of his life, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. 00:08:12.300 --> 00:08:17.320 He knows that as long as he endures, as long as he waits, as long as he longs for the Lord, 00:08:17.420 --> 00:08:18.720 there's going to be vindication. 00:08:19.840 --> 00:08:23.240 And he's proven, tested genuineness of his faith. 00:08:23.660 --> 00:08:25.700 It's going to result in his ultimate salvation. 00:08:25.699 --> 00:08:29.680 And that's what we should, our posture should be in life. 00:08:30.360 --> 00:08:32.279 That's what Christ did, right? 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:37.840 Christ suffered and died in our place and was ultimately vindicated through his resurrection and ascension. 00:08:38.460 --> 00:08:42.620 And we are to, as his followers, walk in the footsteps, hit his footsteps. 00:08:42.620 --> 00:08:50.539 And as we do that, we become a picture of what Christ has done for the world to see. 00:08:51.799 --> 00:09:00.039 And we get to experience the joy that Christ experienced in persevering in the faith. 00:09:03.940 --> 00:09:06.460 So let's sing a song and pray. 00:09:06.460 --> 00:09:06.519 Amen. 00:09:12.620 --> 00:09:12.860 Amen.