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message from God's Word will be a blessing to you.
Psalm 119. We're going to look at 2 verses
here tonight from this portion of the scripture in the, the
message does come from these two verses.
Not typical of how I would normally preach, which would be
dealing with one passage in particular.
But we're going to see these verses illustrated in Acts
chapter 4 in just a moment. So I want you to notice verse 67
and verse 71. So we'll read 1.
We'll skip down a few. Psalm 119.
Verse 67 The psalmist writes here, before I was afflicted I
went astray, but now have I kept thy word.
Verse 71 It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I
might learn thy statutes. I want you to think about this
question tonight as we move forward in the in God's word.
How is affliction good for God's people?
How on earth, how on earth in your life is affliction good for
you? I want you to think about that
tonight and you can be seated, please.
Affliction. What is affliction?
Affliction could probably be defined in this manner.
It would be circumstances involving pain, emotional or
spiritual or physical. Affliction is anxiety, trouble,
stress, or it could be the state of experiencing pressure or
persecution from without or self-inflicted affliction,
foolish, living, sinful, living affliction.
We saw this word in these two verses tonight, verses 67 and
71, and we can find this word and several other places in the
Word of God. Affliction.
Know this tonight that affliction of itself is not
good. I think we would all agree with
that, and we would believe that affliction alone by itself is
not good. Anxiety, pressure, stress,
mistreatment of of towards you or a poor decision, sinful
decisions in your life that reap consequences is not good.
But God, the one who's sovereign and providential over the
affairs of the lives of his children.
But God is not limited in being able to use affliction to work
for our overall spiritual success if he is in the
equation. If Christ is in your life, God
is not restricted from taking your affliction and as Romans
828 says, using it for good. And that good is always Christ
likeness. And so I want us to turn our
attention to Acts chapter 4, Acts chapter 4.
And I want us to look at a group of people who experienced first
hand how their affliction came with God's grace.
That's the title of the message tonight.
Afflictions come with grace. Afflictions come with grace.
Let's pray our Father in heaven, your people have gathered here
tonight. Not for me.
They've gathered here tonight to fellowship with one another in
Jesus name and to come under the influence of the Word of God,
who is our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we might go out into a
world here in a moment and to continue being salt and light in
our homes and our communities and on the job.
I pray, O dear God, Holy Spirit, that you would meet the need of
your people here tonight and that your word would speak and
that your word would change hearts and encourage the
believer tonight. I do thank you for this moment.
I do thank you for the Word of God, which is a lamp unto my
feet and a light unto my path. The Word of God that spoke the
earth into existence, that reveals who you are to us.
The Word of God that reveals who we are, The Word of God Jesus
Christ, who brings us to you and sanctifies you and will take us
all the way home. And so, Lord, this is your
moment to speak with your people in Jesus name, Amen.
In Acts chapter 4, the membership of the church at
Jerusalem illustrates how their affliction was used for their
spiritual success. So to give some context to the
verses we'll read in a moment, the apostles from the church at
Jerusalem were being persecuted. They were being afflicted for
what? For obeying God's will, for
declaring Christ. In verse 3, which we will not
read, we would see that verse 3 tells us that Peter and John,
these two apostles, they were arrested for preaching Christ.
And then in down in verses 17 and 18 of Acts 4, these verses
inform us that before they were released from jail, the
establishment of Jerusalem threatened them with future
arrest should they continue to publicly preach Christ.
I would say that this is an affliction.
Would you? Yeah.
OK, so the apostles were after further declaring Christ, they
gathered with their church, which is a proper response.
After they were threatened, they and further declared Christ,
they went and gathered with their church and reported the
affliction that they came under, that they were arrested and then
that they were before they were released, they were threatened.
If they continue to preach Christ, they would be arrested
again, or else. And so this brings us to Acts
chapter 4 and verse 23. I want us to notice the details
of verses 23 through 34 as these two church members gather with
the church and tell them what happened to them.
Verse 23, in being let go, they went to their own company.
That would be their group of disciples, their very own local
church in Jerusalem, and reported all that the chief
priests and elders had said unto them.
And when they heard that, when the church heard that, they
lifted up their voice to God with 1 accord.
In other words, when they heard this news from these two fellow
brothers in Christ, they prayed. They prayed as a church and
said, This Lord, thou art God, which has made heaven and earth
and the sea, and all that in them is who by the mouth of thy
servant David has said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people
imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up,
and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and
against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy
child Jesus, whom thou has anointed.
Both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people
of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand
and thy counsel determined before to be done.
And now, Lord, behold their threatenings.
So they were saying, God, you knew that Christ and His Church
would be persecuted. And here it is, it's happening.
They're saying this to the Lord. Verse 29 And now Lord, behold
their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants us the church,
that with all boldness they may speak thy word.
Give this to continue to give this to Peter and John boldness
by stretching forth thine hand to heal, and that signs and
wonders may be done by the by the name of the holy Child
Jesus. They said, Amen.
Verse 31 Here's what happened. And when they had prayed, the
place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they
were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word
with of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that
believed were of 1 accord and of one soul.
Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he
possessed was his own. But they had all things common.
They loved each other, and with great power gave the apostles
witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
And catch this tonight, Church, this phrase at the end of verse
33. And great grace was upon them
all. Neither was there any among them
that lacked for any. For many, as were possessors of
lands or houses, sold them, and brought the prices of the things
that were sold. Nowhere in Acts chapter 4 is it
recorded that the members of the church complained about what was
now their affliction. You said that their affliction,
I thought it was Peter and John who were afflicted.
No, catch this tonight. That when the Peter and John
came to their church and and made the affliction known to the
church, the affliction became the burden of the church.
The church had to bear this burden with the rest of the body
of Christ, Peter and John. And so there is not recorded
that they complained. Neither is it recorded that the
church members plotted revenge against the establishment of
Jerusalem. But what our passage does reveal
is the church responded to their affliction with prayer to God.
That's how they responded to all of this in verses 24 to 31.
We saw here at the very beginning of their prayer that
their prayer consisted of worship.
Worship. They acknowledged the sovereign
rule and Providence of God over the situation, not just over the
situation of of people being arrested now and people being
threatened for preaching Christ, but the situation that now
affects the church. They worshipped God.
They acknowledged his sovereignty in verses 24 through
31 and then in 29 and 30. They're praying then consisted
of asking for Holy Spirit induced boldness to continue in
the will of God. They didn't come to God and say
Lord, make the affliction, make the persecution stop, make it go
away. We don't, we don't want this
anymore. May they never find us.
May nobody ever be arrested again.
That is not exactly what they said, but they asked for the
Spirit's help to continue to do the will of God, which is to
continuing to magnify Christ as a church.
In other words, the church prayed according to God's will
that Christ would continue to be exalted instead instead of
subdued and and hushed. And so the Bible says some of
these famous words here in verse 33.
And when they had prayed, and when they had prayed according
to God's will that Christ would be glorified, that's always
God's will, that we would be like Christ, that we would
respond like Christ, that we would shine his lights for
Christ, that we would be savory and holy like Christ.
When they had prayed according to God's will, the Bible says to
us in verse at the end of verse 33, they experienced God's grace
in a time of thriving as a church in spite of their
affliction. This wasn't peacetime.
This was in spite of their affliction, in spite of the the
overshadowing threat that people could go spend time in jail or
prison or worse. What is grace?
We do need to be reminded of this once in a while because
even I can forget what grace is. Grace is God's power to do that
which I cannot on my own to do that.
What is the that the will of God.
Grace is God's power to do that which I cannot do on my own.
God's will cannot be carried out on our own.
Grace is an absolute must have you and I couldn't even come to
to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ without the grace that
comes through the gospel. And that is the will of God,
that we come to Christ through the gospel.
And so is the rest of the Christian life lived out through
the grace of God. And so grace was experienced by
the church when they submitted to God's will, when they placed
faith in the plan of God, which was to declare Christ, to
magnify Christ, to start churches where Christ can be
declared and magnified and in effect and change people's
lives. But when we don't come to God in
our affliction, we will fail to experience the grace that God
can give in our affliction. When we don't come to the Lord
in our affliction, we are the ones who will miss out on what
God can enable us to do if we did not come to Him so.
But with this church, grace produced boldness within the
membership to function according to God's plan.
And again, God's plan was that they would preach Jesus Christ
and that they would fellowship in ministry and in prayer
together, and that they would continue in the Great
Commission. This church experienced the
boldness that only the grace of Almighty God can produce.
So how was affliction good for God's people in the Church of
Jerusalem? Well, God providentially used
their affliction to provoke them to wholeheartedly depend on Him.
Let me say that again. God providentially used their
affliction to provoke His people to come unto Him and depend on
Him for the grace that they needed.
Therefore, their dependence on God's grace caused them to do
their part to declare Christ and do the work of the ministry to
one another. In other words, the affliction
was out of their control and that's exactly where God wanted
it is that the affliction that they would not be so focused on
the affliction and trying to control the establishment at
Jerusalem, but that they would acknowledge the sovereignty of
God and they would submit the problem to Him.
And then the grace of God would come down and they could face
each other and continue being the church to one another while
God over here would could take care of the affliction.
It was good for the church to be afflicted because God used it to
develop their Christ like character.
Affliction isn't good, but God can take affliction and use it
for His purposes. And the purpose in our lives is
always Christ like character. The character of Christ is that
we would love, enjoy, worship, trust and obey the Father no
matter what. Let me say that again.
The character of Christ, the mind of Christ, the life of
Christ is to love, enjoy, worship, trust, and obey the
Father no matter what. So let's notice an additional
example please, in Psalm 107. Psalm 107.
An additional example, Psalm 107 is often viewed as, and it is
the truth as a Psalm of Thanksgiving, giving thanks and
praise to God for what He has done in the lives of His people.
Psalm 107. I want us to see secondly
tonight that God uses afflictions in our lives to work
for our spiritual character development.
God uses afflictions in our lives to work for our spiritual
character development. And so I want us to notice that
we could go to any, any section of verses in Psalm 107, but I
believe the Lord wants us to look at verses 33 through 38.
Notice with me verse 33, Speaking of God.
He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the water
springs into dry ground, a fruitful land into Baroness for
the wickedness of them that dwell therein.
He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground
into water springs, and there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that
they may prepare a city of habitation.
And now, and sow the fields and plant vineyards, which they may
yield fruits of increase, He blessed them also, so that they
are multiplied greatly, and suffereth not their cattle to
decrease. So we see here I want to ask
this question. Why did the Lord lead His people
to such dry, barren and difficult locations?
It was not because of the wickedness of his people that
the land was dry and barren, but it's because of the wickedness
of those who live there already. And but God led his people into
a dry and barren place. Why did God do that?
Is the Lord cruel and unkind? Was he judging them for
something in particular? His very own people?
Was he judging them for something in particular?
Or maybe did the Lord God mess up his directions?
Oops, I meant to tell you to go that way, but here we are.
I want us to see here the answer to this question in the middle
of verse 36. He did this that they may
prepare a city of habitation and sow the fields and plant
vineyards which may yield fruits of increase.
And he blessed them also, so that they are multiplied greatly
and suffereth not their cattle to decrease.
The Lord in loving, merciful Providence led His people to
these geographical locations. In order for them to develop and
grow in spiritual character, they needed to learn to stop
complaining and begin experiencing God's grace to do
His will. What was His will in in passages
like these? God's will was for them to work
hard and build a place of habitation.
It was God's will for them to develop character.
God's will was for them to plant fields and vineyards.
God's will was for them to grow in spiritual character in a
difficult situation and just let God be God and bless their
humble diligence. God was bringing them into a
place where they had no other choice but to get to work and
trust God and learn how to get their hands dirty and learn how
to see God produce fruit in their humble obedience.
He brought them to, if you will, a a, a broken birdhouse and had
them figure out how to fix it so that they could be good at
building birdhouses. If you will, God's will was for
His people to learn what it meant to cry out to Him for
helping grace and experience his miraculous blessing.
Brother Chucky taught this morning or preached or taught,
taught, preached, right. He was going back and forth on
that on from Mark chapter 6 and how Jesus would have passed by
his disciples. It wasn't that Jesus was going
to miss his disciples. He wanted his disciples to learn
what it meant to cry out, to humble themselves and get a hold
of the Lord Jesus Christ and let Him do for them, but that they
what they were trying to do for themselves.
He wanted them to be in this situation, to provoke, to induce
if you will, their faith. God's will was for His people in
these afflicting circumstances. It was for them to take their
eyes off of their weaknesses and learn to concentrate on Him.
God's will was for His people to stop bowing down and submitting
to their afflictions and and crumbling and folding to their
afflictions and to learn to bow down to Almighty Sovereign God
and trust His grace and to grow in spiritual character
development. And it's important to note why
this is the Thanksgiving Psalm. It's important to note that
multiple times throughout Psalm one O 7, the people of God
offered praise and Thanksgiving after they realized that God
used this for our good. I mean, notice that here in
verse one it says, Oh, give thanks O to the Lord, for He is
good for his mercy endureth forever.
Verse a Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness
and for his wonderful works to the children of men.
And that is said at least I think three more times in this
passage. And that always came after they
saw what God did in their affliction.
They gave thanks. They came to understand that it
was a loving of God to allow them to be afflicted because of
what it did for their relationship with Him.
The very last verse of Psalm one O 7 verse 43.
At the end of all of this, whoso is wise and will observe these
things, even they shall understand the loving kindness
of the Lord. Church Christian, in your
affliction God is loving you. He's loving you.
He's not letting you stay who you are.
He can take the affliction and use it to form you into His
image. Go back to Psalm 119, please,
where we started tonight. Psalm 119.
Affliction of itself, affliction left to itself, if you will.
Affliction upon which God's hand is not, is not good, but God
intends to use it to be good for us.
Your affliction not only works for you, but it works for God,
meaning God is in charge. Your affliction has to submit to
your loving heavenly Father. Verse 67 it says again, before I
was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word.
The psalmist recognized through his affliction that prior to it,
before it, he was wandering away from practicing God's presence,
from living in desperation for his Creator before the
affliction. But although the psalmist
affliction was bad, he recognized and experienced that
Almighty God was able to use it for His good.
In this particular stanza of Psalm 119, the writer is
expressing the affliction of being lied about, his integrity
being threatened. But in verse 71, he recognizes
that in God's sovereignty he was using this affliction to draw
the psalmist into his presence and meditation on the truth on
the Word of God, which would be later seen as the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Word of God. He says in verse 71, It is good
for me, it is good for me that I have experienced this
difficulty, this affliction, this pressure.
There's anxiety, the stress that I might learn thy statutes, the
word of God. You see, when God is in the
equation of your life, affliction works at the pleasure
of God's providential, omniscient sovereignty in the
lives of his people. The writer's affliction, it
humbled him. He, he could not control these
people. He could not control the
situation. And so he had to humbly put it
in God's hand, or can I say this, Acknowledge and recognize
that it was actually always in God's hands.
His affliction exposed his weaknesses and his spiritual
character, and therefore God took the affliction and
graciously used it for the psalmist's spiritual advantage.
How is affliction good for you? How is affliction good for me?
How you find your home life, your marriage or seemingly
prolonged state of singleness afflicting your spirit.
Your older age is an affliction to your spirits, your mind and
body. Your poor or questionable health
experience is an affliction to your entire person.
How you compare your economic situation to your neighbor is
afflicting your mind and your spirits and your perspective on
life. Your past, far removed or
recent, is an affliction to your mind, your memory, and even your
relationships today, your past, your extended family members
have made decisions that afflict your relationship with them.
Put a strain, put a stress, put an anxiety on your relationship
with them. How can these types of things be
good for us? I want you to know this tonight,
Believer that one of the greatest things the Lord can do
is take a mess brought against you or a mess you brought on
upon yourself and lead you into a specific or lead you into a
specific trial designed just for you.
So He can providentially use it all to help us become more
humble and more enduring and more dependent upon and more in
love with, not ourselves, but with who He is.
That you might learn His statutes, that you might learn
His Word, That you might learn of Christ.
He draws you to Himself while you are being afflicted.
This is the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ, That
because Christ is in the equation of your affliction, God
uses it all to make us what we ought to be.
Listen, the good news for the believer in the affliction is
that Christ is the grace. Jesus Christ is the grace.
Jesus Christ is not just the good news for the lost to come
to Christ. And I think we get thrown off
when we just preach that salvation is about going to
heaven, going to heaven. No, salvation is about Jesus
Christ reconciling our relationship with our Creator
for the here and now and for the after, which is a guarantee.
And so as we think about salvation is for heaven, we
forget to realize that Christ is the good news.
In the midst of your darkest day, He's the light on your
darkest day, He's the good news. He's the hope in your
affliction. Believer, He's not just to be
worshipped in heaven to come, He is to be experienced right now.
Christ is the grace, the living and breathing Word of God.
Thy statutes, thy word, Christ. God's will is not always that
the affliction goes away, but His will always is that we come
to Him and experience the grace of Christ.
Jesus said this in Matthew Chapter 11.
Come unto me, all ye that labor in are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me and I that I, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye
shall find rest for your afflicted soul, If I might add
the word. For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light. Sounds like Christ is the
answer, not just for the lost, but for you right now in the
midst of your affliction. He's the answer.
Get to Him. Get to God every day and
especially in your affliction. Know this tonight, that God uses
afflictions in our lives to draw us to Himself so we thrive in
the grace found in Christ. Are you experiencing God's grace
in the middle of your affliction?
Are you learning to pray? Are you coming to love Christ
more than coming to love what He loves others?
The Father? Are you learning to trust God?
Have you learned to stop complaining about where you are
and begin learning commitment, hard work, grit, endurance?
Psalm one O 7. Are you submitting yourself to
your sovereign, faithful and loving God who is working to
help you? Think like Christ?
Are you? Will you in your dark day?
Could be tomorrow, could be next week, could be here as we speak
tonight and are you letting your church family and pastor be the
help in your life that Christ set them up to be the church is
a grace. You say how the church is the
body of you can say it's OK, it's doctrinally correct.
Christ, the body of Christ, He's not here physically.
He's here in spirit, but this is his representation of him.
Are you attached to the church? I don't have, I don't know who
my pastor is. I don't have a pastor.
I don't know who my group of disciples are.
I just, I don't, I don't know. Are you attached to the church?
The church is a grace. You stiff arm the church.
You stiff arm, how God wants to help you.
You say, I I don't need to belong somewhere.
I just, I go, I float and I go and I go everywhere and we're
all God's children. But but who's your pastor?
Who are you accountable to? Who's there on your dark day?
I don't know. We'll join a church and
experience God's grace, submit to his plan.
And there's the grace that you can have in your dark day.
God knows the plans that He has for you, and He won't allow the
afflictions to destroy you, but rather to work for your
spiritual success in the days that are still in front of you.
There's a story of a boy who, and about the month of January,
expressed his desire to potentially join the high school
cross country team. And so with that in mind, as
spring came along, his father began to take him on hikes every
other day after work or any given time.
And they, they would hike for, for a couple miles and go up and
down terrain. And they would always get to the
top of this Cliff. And the boy's father would have
him try to to just push the boulder that was on the Cliff
and try to push it over the Cliff.
And the boy never understood why they hiked every other
afternoon, nor why he had to push this boulder that was going
nowhere. Finally, at the end of summer,
upon the boy insisting why they always did this, the dad told
his son months later at the end of summer, Son, look at your
arms. Look at your legs.
Look at the muscle that has come to be in those parts of you, how
they gained muscle and he gained endurance.
And the father said, consider how much that he and his son had
grown in their relationship during that time.
Then his dad added, now you're prepared to endure high school,
cross country and thrive. And you know, son, from all of
this, I'm your biggest supporter.
Affliction come comes with grace.
Afflictions come with grace that is found and drawing closer to
Christ. Christ is your greatest
supporter as He uses your affliction to shape your life.
Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of
Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing
to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us
know by contacting us at info@mylibertybaptist.org.
Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,
MA. May the Lord bless you as you
grow in His Word.