Title: Faithful Affliction 
Text: Psalm 119:75-76,   October 12, 1997 
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus 
Christ.  Amen.  Our message is taken from the text of Psalm 
119:75-76 which reads: "I know, O Lord, that your laws are 
righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.  May your 
unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your 
servant."  This is the Word.  You may be seated. 
There is something in our Psalm today which may be surprising to 
you.  Perhaps you passed by it without thinking about it.  Maybe 
you thought you misunderstood the words.   
Verse 75 says, "I know, O Lord, that your laws are righteous."  
This part is fine.  Then it goes on and says, "and in 
faithfulness you have afflicted me."  The writer of this Psalm is 
saying that the Lord afflicted him.  The idea of the Lord 
afflicting us may seem to be backwards to you.  You might think 
that the Lord is supposed to help us, so why would he bring 
trouble upon us?  That seems to be going the wrong way. 
I have found that many people react so strongly to this idea that 
they stop listening.  They refuse to believe it or listen to it.  
There it is, however, and God's Word is speaking to us, clearly 
saying God afflicts us.  I hope you will not stop listening now, 
but continue to hear and learn from God's Word. 
Many people have trouble with the idea of God bringing suffering 
upon them, because they have tried to redefine God in their own 
terms.  Their god becomes a private invention of their minds and 
they imagine their god fulfills their every desire.   
Martin Luther wrote, "God is good, just, and merciful, also when 
He smites us.  Whoever will not believe this fact forsakes the 
unity of faith that there is but one God and invents for himself 
another god, who is not consistent with himself, but is now good, 
then evil." 
Some, then, invent their own god.  This notion of a "pleasant" 
god is one who gives only pleasant things and avoids the 
unpleasant.  The pleasant god doesn't have any harsh words to say 
to his followers.  The pleasant god would never discipline his 
believers.  This invented god never says "No!" 
If you believe in this pleasant god, then you must come up with a 
source of unpleasant things.  You need to have another kind of 
god, this one an "unpleasant" god.  Unpleasant god is the meanie 
who dishes out all suffering.  This unpleasant god makes people 
sick and makes them die.  This god causes people to loose their 
jobs.  The god brings flooding and extra snow.  See, if you have 
a pleasant god, you need an unpleasant god to bring all 
unpleasant things about.   
Often the devil is given the job of being unpleasant god.  The 
devil gets elevated to a position of equal power to the pleasant 
god, and the two of them are fighting it out.  This type of 
thinking just does not match God's Word, however.  For our own 
good, we are to submit ourselves to God's Word and not to 
inventions of our minds. 
The idea of the pleasant god finds itself imbedded in several 
popular movements.  First there is the prosperity gospel 
movement.  This teaches that if you are a Christian and have a 
"good" enough faith, then you will be given prosperity by God.  
Being a Christian can make you rich.  If you have enough faith, 
you will never get sick.  This sort of prosperity gospel, which 
is not a real gospel, was popularized by Robert Schuller. 
Another form of the idea of a pleasant god is in the religious 
patriotism movement.  Here the idea is that if we just make this 
country a Christian country once again then everything will start 
going right for us.  We will be respected and feared, our 
unemployment, inflation and the trade deficit will vanish, and so 
forth.  The pleasant god only gives out pleasant things and so if 
we make him happy, he will make everything good for us in our 
country. 
The pleasant god idea finds itself in a third form which is very 
popular today; that is angel worship.  Pick up any of a number of 
books on angels, or watch any of several movies and TV shows and 
you will see this idea.  Here are the angels which do whatever 
makes people happy.  Angels are here to satisfy your wishes.  
These books, movies and TV shows seldom deal with God.  What they 
have done is to make angels into little pleasant gods who only 
bring us pleasant things. 
God's Word in our psalm corrects this notion of a god who only 
brings pleasantries.  "In faithfulness you have afflicted me," it 
says.  This is not the only place in Scripture that presents this 
idea.  Isa. 45 says, "I bring prosperity and create disaster."  
In Hebrews 12:6 we read, "the Lord disciplines those He loves and 
He punishes everyone He accepts as a son."  God brings trials and 
suffering to His children.  He disciplines us through the 
unpleasant things we experience.   
How do we understand this then?  It doesn't seem to make sense 
that God afflicts us.  He brings suffering upon us and so it 
seems God is just being mean.  The way to understand this is to 
realize what God's goal is for us.  God wants all people to be 
saved.  He wants them in heaven with Him.  This is the reason He 
sent His Son.  John 3:17 explains, "For God did not send His Son 
into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world 
through Him."  For this reason, Jesus Christ suffered and died on 
the cross, and rose again.  God came in man's place and was 
afflicted and took the punishment for our sins.  All this to 
achieve God's purpose, of saving the world.  Now God wants us to 
receive His gift of salvation through faith.  However, our sinful 
nature remains, and that sinful nature makes faith difficult.  To 
help us in keeping our faith, God disciplines us.  God has our 
best interests in mind and that sometimes requires the pain and 
unpleasantness of discipline.  Hebrews 12 explains this: 
"...God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his 
holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  
Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and 
peace for those who have been trained by it." 
From our perspective, the discipline might seem harsh, too harsh.  
God has a bigger view than we do, however, and He knows what is 
best for us. 
Consider this example.  Should you get a flu shot this year?  
Well, if you knew ahead of time that you would catch the flu and 
die, then the $10 and the pain of the shot would be well worth 
it.  From the point of view of the small child facing a big 
needle, things might look different. 
God sees from His view what is best for us so that we might 
ultimately be saved.  God disciplines us because He loves us and 
wants us to be saved.   
Our text shows us how God loves us, also.  It says, "...in 
faithfulness you have afflicted me."  God is being faithful when 
He brings trouble upon us.  "Faithful to what?" we might ask.  We 
see from our text, the Psalmist has his hope in God's unfailing 
love.  He relies on God's promise to His servant.  As believers 
in Jesus Christ, we are the servants of God, the one to whom He 
has made His promise of salvation.  The Psalm says that God has 
been faithful to His promise.  God is faithful when He 
disciplines us so we might remain faithful.  God is keeping His 
promises. 
The idea of faithfulness carries with it also the idea of 
steadiness and firmness.  The Lord is steady and firm in the 
direction He is taking us.  He will not be swerved off course.  
His heading is in the direction that brings us through this life 
with our faith intact and into our heavenly home.  That is the 
direction the Lord is taking us.  Off of this path, He does not 
swerve.   
A good example of steadiness can be had from parenting.  A child 
may do things which need to be punished or from which the child 
has to be protected.  A parent who is firm and unswerving, will 
not change how they control or discipline the child even when the 
child might complain.  It may be that the child runs out into the 
street and then when the parent tries to stop it, the child has a 
temper tantrum.  If the parent is steady, they will not give in 
to their child's every complaint, but will "hold the course" on 
the heading towards the child's best interests.  Steadfastness in 
the child's best interests might lead to some actions which the 
child will not enjoy.  The faithful parent is not swayed.  
Likewise, God is not swayed in His faithfulness toward us. 
How, then, should we respond to affliction?  Some will think that 
they have been mistreated and that they have not received what 
they ought as children of God.  They may even think that God has 
forgotten them and become cruel to them.  However, unless these 
thoughts are checked, the believer may loose his faith. 
Rather, we ought to see affliction as (1) revealing God's love 
toward us.  It marks us as God's children.  (2) We ought to see 
it as light and insignificant.  2Cor 4 says, "For our light 
affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."  Focus not on the 
affliction, but on the eternal glory.  (3) Understand that the 
affliction is meant to exercise your faith.  In 1Peter 1 we read, 
"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if 
need be, you have been grieved by various trials that the 
genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold 
that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to 
praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ."  And 
(4), we finally respond to affliction with prayer as Isa 26 
suggests: "LORD, in trouble they have visited You, They poured 
out a prayer when Your chastening was upon them."   
Where do we find the strength to face affliction?  We find it 
only in the assurance of the forgiveness of sins and salvation.  
The one who can disregard the present sufferings is the one who 
is assured of the future glory awaiting him.  Anyone who makes 
grace and salvation dependent upon human works then deprives 
himself of the strength to face affliction.   
As Luther wrote, "Because he is not certain of eternal life and 
is not awaiting the blessed hope, he cannot be content nor have 
patience.  As soon as the wind changes and things do not go as he 
would like, he grows impatient and murmurs against God." 
The one who is assured of his eternal glory is able to face 
affliction.  Were we not stuck in our sinful flesh, Luther 
envisions this response to affliction: "Therefore we have all 
reason to say, I will gladly keep silence about my suffering, not 
boast or brag of it, but patiently bear all that my dear God 
sends and lays on me, and even thank Him from all my heart that 
he has chosen for me such a great, surpassing goodness and 
grace." 
Perhaps, as the Holy Spirit works in us, we might make it our 
goal to respond to affliction this way.  In this, let us cling 
tightly to the certainty we have in the Gospel.  May you trust 
completely in the forgiveness and salvation promised and secured 
through your redeemer, Jesus Christ.  Amen. 
 
 
 
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