The Goodness of the Chisel: Text: Psalm 119:65-72
Introduction: A Therapeutic Age
We live in a soft age, a therapeutic age. Our culture has come to believe that the highest good is the absence of pain, the removal of all affliction, and the pursuit of untroubled personal comfort. We have made an idol of ease. Consequently, when suffering comes, as it always does, the modern man has only two categories for it: meaningless tragedy or malicious injustice. He either shakes his fist at an empty sky or at a God he conceives of as a cosmic bully. He has no framework for understanding affliction as a tool, a medicine, or a gift.
Into this padded, sterile, and ultimately fragile worldview, this stanza of Psalm 119 lands like a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil. The psalmist here does not simply endure his affliction; he evaluates it. He does not merely survive his hardship; he gives thanks for it. He looks back on his troubles and says, with the settled conviction of a man who has learned a fundamental truth about the universe, "It is good for me that I was afflicted."
This is not stoicism, and it is not masochism. It is robust, hard-nosed, covenantal faith. It is the logic of a son who knows his Father is a master craftsman, and that the chisel, though it bites and stings, is guided by a hand of infinite skill and perfect love. This passage teaches us to view our lives, and especially our hardships, through the lens of God's sovereign goodness and His holy Word. It shows us the stark antithesis between the man whose heart is fattened by worldly ease and the man whose heart delights in the law of God. It is a lesson in divine mathematics, where subtraction leads to addition, and where affliction yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
The Text
You have dealt well with Your slave, O Yahweh, 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 smeared me with lying; 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.
(Psalm 119:65-72 LSB)
The Foundational Confession (v. 65, 68)
The entire stanza rests upon a foundational, bedrock conviction about the character and conduct of God. Look at verse 65:
"You have dealt well with Your slave, O Yahweh, according to Your word." (Psalm 119:65)
This is the psalmist's summary judgment on his entire life up to this point, a life that we know from the context has included significant affliction. He does not say, "You have dealt well with me, except for the hard parts." He says that God's dealings, taken as a whole, are good. This is not wishful thinking; it is a conclusion based on evidence. What evidence? "According to Your word." God has made promises to His people, and the psalmist has taken the time to check the receipts. He has compared God's actions to God's promises and found them to be perfectly congruent. God does what He says He will do, and all that He does is good.
He doubles down on this in verse 68. This is one of the most compact and glorious statements about God in all of Scripture.
"You are good and do good; Teach me Your statutes." (Psalm 119:68)
Notice the two parts. First, God's nature: "You are good." Goodness is not just one of His attributes; it is the essence of His being. He is the standard of goodness. Second, God's action: "and do good." A good God cannot help but do good things. All His actions flow from His character. This is the presupposition that changes everything. If you begin here, then you can process suffering correctly. If you do not begin here, then suffering will inevitably crush you or make you bitter. Because God is good and does good, the psalmist's immediate response is not to ask for relief, but for instruction: "Teach me Your statutes." He wants to understand the grammar of this goodness. He wants to align his life with the character of the God who is only and always good.
The Sanctifying School of Affliction (v. 67, 71)
With the foundation of God's goodness firmly laid, the psalmist now explains the function of his suffering. These two verses are the heart of the stanza.
"Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word." (Psalm 119:67)
"It is good for me that I was afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes." (Psalm 119:71)
Here we see affliction in two complementary roles: it is both corrective and instructive. In verse 67, it is the divine sheepdog that bites at the heels of the wandering sheep to bring it back to the path. The psalmist confesses a tendency to stray when life is easy. Prosperity can be a great narcotic. Comfort can dull our spiritual senses. But then affliction came, and it served as a spiritual smelling salt. It woke him up. The pain had a purpose: it arrested his drift and turned his face back to the Word of God.
But verse 71 goes even deeper. Affliction is not just a course correction; it is a classroom. It is not just good because it stops us from doing bad things; it is good because it is the necessary precondition for learning God's statutes in a profound way. There are some lessons that can only be learned in the furnace. There is a depth of understanding of God's law, a grasp of His promises, and a sight of His character that you cannot get from a book or a lecture. You have to learn it on your back. It is God's chosen curriculum for teaching us what really matters. He is teaching us to build our house on the rock, and sometimes He uses a storm to show us the wisdom of His building code.
The Antithesis: Fat Hearts and Slanderous Lips (v. 69-70)
The life of faith is not lived in a vacuum. It is lived in a world populated by the arrogant, and they do not appreciate this kind of piety.
"The arrogant have smeared me with lying; With all my heart I will observe Your precepts. Their heart is covered with fat, But I delight in Your law." (Psalm 119:69-70)
The arrogant are the proud, the insolent, those who live as though God does not exist. Their response to the psalmist's faith is slander. They "smeared" him with lies. This is what the world does. When it cannot refute the believer's argument, it attacks his character. But notice the psalmist's response. He does not say, "I will argue back," or "I will clear my name." He says, "With all my heart I will observe Your precepts." The best apologetic against a slanderous world is a life of joyful, wholehearted obedience. Let them lie; you just keep the commandments.
Verse 70 gives us a stunning diagnosis of these arrogant men: "Their heart is covered with fat." This is a picture of a heart that has become dull, insensitive, and unresponsive. It is the spiritual equivalent of arteriosclerosis. They have gorged themselves on worldly success, pride, and pleasure to the point where they can no longer feel anything. They are calloused and numb to the law of God. The direct antithesis is the psalmist's condition: "But I delight in Your law." While they are bloated and sluggish, he is spiritually fit and active, finding his joy and sustenance in the very thing they cannot even perceive. This is the great divide, the fundamental antithesis between the city of God and the city of man.
The Great Revaluation (v. 66, 72)
This entire experience, being dealt with well by God, being afflicted, being slandered, leads the psalmist to two concluding realities: a desperate prayer and a settled evaluation.
"Teach me good discernment and knowledge, For I believe in Your commandments." (Psalm 119:66)
Because he has seen the goodness of God in the school of affliction, and because he believes God's commands are true and right, his great desire is for discernment. He wants to be able to make sound judgments, to distinguish between truth and error, good and evil. He knows that the Word is his only guide through a world of fat-hearted slanderers, and so he begs God to be his teacher. This is the cry of a man who knows he cannot navigate on his own.
And this leads to the final, glorious conclusion in verse 72. This is the bottom line. After all the afflictions, the slanders, and the lessons learned, what is the verdict?
"The law of Your mouth is better to me Than thousands of gold and silver pieces." (Psalm 119:72)
Affliction has reordered his values. It has burned away the dross. He has been put in a position to weigh two things in the balance: the Word of God and all the wealth the world can offer. His conclusion is unequivocal. The law that proceeds from the mouth of God is of infinitely greater value. The arrogant, with their fat hearts, live for the thousands of gold and silver pieces. That is their delight, and it has made them dull. But the believer, disciplined by a good and loving Father, has been taught to treasure the true riches.
This is where God wants to bring all of us. He wants to bring us to the place where we can honestly say that we would not trade what we have learned of Him through His Word in the midst of our trials for any amount of money or comfort. He wants us to see that His law is not a burden, but our most precious inheritance. And He is a good enough Father to use whatever means necessary, including the sharp and painful chisel of affliction, to teach us that lesson. For it is a lesson that is good for us, and it is a lesson that leads to life.