A Wineskin in the Smoke: Enduring Faith in Affliction Text: Psalm 119:81-88
Introduction: The Christian in the Crucible
We live in an age that prizes comfort above all things. Our entire civilization is a vast, intricate machine designed to insulate us from hardship, from pain, from inconvenience, and ultimately, from reality. The modern man, particularly the modern Western man, believes he has a right to an untroubled life. And when trouble inevitably comes, as it always does, he is spiritually and morally unprepared. He cries foul, as though the universe has violated his warranty. He either despairs, concluding that life is meaningless, or he rages, looking for a political or therapeutic scapegoat to blame for his misery.
The Christian faith offers a starkly different worldview. It does not promise a life free from affliction; it promises a life full of meaning within affliction. It does not offer an escape from the fire; it offers the presence of the Son of God with us in the midst of the furnace. The Bible is not a book written by comfortable men in quiet libraries. It is a book forged in the crucible of suffering, persecution, and intense pressure. And nowhere is this reality more poignantly expressed than in the Psalms.
The section of Psalm 119 before us today, the Kaph section, is a cry from the depths. It is the prayer of a man pushed to the very edge of his endurance. His soul is failing, his eyes are failing, he feels as useless as a dried-up wineskin in the smoke. He is surrounded by arrogant enemies who despise God's law and who are actively seeking his destruction. And yet, this is not a psalm of despair. It is a psalm of desperate, clinging, rugged faith. It is a master class in how to suffer as a Christian. It teaches us that true spiritual strength is not the absence of weakness, but rather a tenacious hold on the Word of God when all other supports have given way.
Our therapeutic culture tells us to look inward for strength, to find our truth, to practice self-care. The psalmist shows us the folly of this. When you are in the smoke, when you are fainting and failing, there is nothing inside of you to draw upon. Your only hope is to look upward, to God's salvation, and outward, to God's Word. This is not a passage for the triumphant. This is a passage for the exhausted, the persecuted, the saint who is wondering how much longer he can possibly hold on. And the answer it gives is a profound comfort: you hold on by holding to the Word, and you will be held by the God of the Word.
The Text
My soul fails with longing for Your salvation; I wait for Your word. My eyes fail with longing for Your word, Saying, “When will You comfort me?” For I am like a wineskin in the smoke, But I do not forget Your statutes. How many are the days of Your slave? When will You execute judgment on those who persecute me? The arrogant have dug pits for me, Men who are not in accord with Your law. All Your commandments are faithful; They have persecuted me with lying; help me! They almost made an end of me on the earth, But as for me, I did not forsake Your precepts. Revive me according to Your lovingkindness, So that I may keep the testimony of Your mouth.
(Psalm 119:81-88 LSB)
Fainting Faith (vv. 81-82)
We begin with the psalmist's raw confession of his condition:
"My soul fails with longing for Your salvation; I wait for Your word. My eyes fail with longing for Your word, Saying, 'When will You comfort me?'" (Psalm 119:81-82)
The word for "fails" here means to be spent, to come to an end. This is a man at the end of his rope. His soul, his very life-force, is consumed with a desperate yearning for God's salvation. This is not a gentle, pious wish; it is a gut-wrenching ache. This is the cry of a soldier on the battlefield who has been fighting for hours, whose muscles are screaming, whose vision is blurring, and who is scanning the horizon for the promised reinforcements. His longing is so intense it is physically and spiritually exhausting him.
But notice the object of his longing: "Your salvation." And notice the foundation of his hope: "I wait for Your word." He is not waiting for a feeling. He is not waiting for his circumstances to change. He is waiting for God's Word. He has a promise from God, and he is staking his entire existence on the reliability of that promise. This is the essence of biblical faith. Faith is not a leap in the dark; it is a stand upon the solid rock of a divine promise, even when the storm is raging and the rock is all you can feel beneath your feet.
His eyes fail him as well. He has been scanning the Scriptures, searching the promises of God, looking for that word of comfort. He is like the watchman on the city wall, straining to see the first hint of dawn after a long, dark, dangerous night (Psalm 130:6). The question, "When will You comfort me?" is not a sign of unbelief. It is the language of covenant intimacy. He is not questioning if God will comfort him, but when. He knows God is a comforter; his trial is one of timing. And this is often our trial. We believe God will act, but the waiting stretches our faith to its breaking point. God makes us wait because he wants us to learn how to wait, trusting Him and not our own timetables.
A Shriveled Faithfulness (v. 83)
The psalmist then gives us one of the most evocative images of suffering in all of Scripture.
"For I am like a wineskin in the smoke, But I do not forget Your statutes." (Psalm 119:83 LSB)
In the ancient world, wineskins were made of animal hide. When they were new, they were supple and useful. But an old wineskin, particularly one left hanging in the rafters of a smoky tent or room, would become black, grimy, brittle, and useless. The constant exposure to soot and heat would dry it out and shrivel it up. This is how the psalmist feels. He feels forgotten, set aside, blackened by affliction, and dried up of all his natural strength and usefulness. He feels like a piece of refuse.
This is a profound description of what prolonged suffering can do to a person. It can make you feel worthless, ugly, and forgotten. The world looks at such a person and sees only a shriveled, useless thing. But here is the pivot of the entire passage, the central girder of his faith: "But I do not forget Your statutes." In the midst of feeling utterly useless, he clings to the one thing that has ultimate use and value: the law of God. His feelings tell him he is worthless. His circumstances tell him he is finished. But his will, by the grace of God, is tethered to the unchanging Word. He cannot control how he feels, but he can control what he remembers and what he holds onto. His grip on the statutes is his only connection to reality in a world of smoke and shadows.
This is a direct polemic against the emotionalism that governs our age. Your feelings are not the arbiter of truth. Your sense of well-being is not the measure of your spiritual health. The true measure is this: when you are in the smoke, do you remember His statutes?
A Righteous Impatience (vv. 84-87)
The psalmist's suffering is not abstract; it is being inflicted by malicious enemies. He now turns his complaint to God, asking for justice.
"How many are the days of Your slave? When will You execute judgment on those who persecute me? The arrogant have dug pits for me, Men who are not in accord with Your law. All Your commandments are faithful; They have persecuted me with lying; help me! They almost made an end of me on the earth, But as for me, I did not forsake Your precepts." (Psalm 119:84-87 LSB)
He asks, "How many are the days of Your slave?" This is not a morbid question about his lifespan. He is asking how many more days he must endure this injustice before God acts. He is God's slave, God's servant, and it is the master's duty to protect his servants. The psalmist is appealing to God's honor. "When will you act?" is a righteous, covenantal appeal for vindication.
His enemies are described in specific terms. They are "arrogant," literally the proud, the insolent. Their central sin is pride, which manifests itself in a contempt for God's law. They are "not in accord with Your law." This is the root of the conflict. This is not a personal squabble. This is a worldview clash, an antithesis between those who submit to God's law and those who defy it. Because they hate God's law, they hate God's servant. So they dig pits for him, a metaphor for laying treacherous, hidden traps to destroy him.
In verse 86, he contrasts their treachery with God's faithfulness. "All Your commandments are faithful." The word is 'emunah, the same root as our word "Amen." It means firm, reliable, trustworthy. The law of God is solid ground. The lies of the wicked are sinking sand. They persecute him "with lying." The native tongue of the seed of the serpent is the lie (John 8:44). And so he cries out, simply, "Help me!" This is the prayer of a man who has no other recourse.
The pressure was immense: "They almost made an end of me on the earth." This was not a minor harassment. This was a life-threatening assault. He was brought to the brink of death. And yet, again, we see that stubborn, tenacious faithfulness: "But as for me, I did not forsake Your precepts." This is the testimony of a man preserved by grace. His perseverance was not the product of his own inner fortitude, but the fruit of God's precepts preserving him. He clung to the Word, and the Word held him fast.
A Plea for Revival (v. 88)
The stanza concludes not with a demand, but with a plea for grace, rooted in God's character and aimed at God's glory.
"Revive me according to Your lovingkindness, So that I may keep the testimony of Your mouth." (Psalm 119:88 LSB)
He asks to be revived, to be made alive again. He recognizes that the spiritual life within him is flickering like a candle in the wind. He needs a fresh infusion of divine life. And he knows where to appeal. He appeals not to his own merit, not to his own faithfulness which he has just described, but to God's "lovingkindness." This is the great covenant word, chesed. It means loyal love, steadfast mercy, covenant faithfulness. He is saying, "Lord, keep me alive, not because I deserve it, but because you are a God who has bound Himself to His people with promises of faithful love."
And what is the purpose of this revival? It is entirely God-centered. "So that I may keep the testimony of Your mouth." He does not ask for revival so that he can be comfortable. He does not ask for relief so he can get back to his own projects. He asks for life so that he can live a life of obedience. He wants strength to keep God's Word. His ultimate desire is not his own comfort, but God's glory, which is manifested when God's people obey God's commands. This is the heart of a true saint. Even in his deepest affliction, his highest goal is to be a faithful servant.
The Smoked Wineskin and the Crucified King
As with all the Psalms, we must ultimately read this through the lens of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the psalmist was a wineskin in the smoke, what was Christ on the cross? He was the one who truly cried out, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matt. 26:38). His eyes failed as He looked for comfort and found none. He was blackened by the soot of our sin, shriveled under the intense heat of the Father's wrath. He was surrounded by arrogant men who dug a pit for Him, who persecuted Him with lying testimony.
They almost made an end of Him on the earth. In fact, they did make an end of Him. He was brought not just to the brink, but into the very heart of death. And yet, through it all, He did not forsake His Father's precepts. "Not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42). He entrusted His spirit to the Father, waiting for the Word of resurrection.
And God revived Him. According to His lovingkindness, His eternal covenant love, God raised Him from the dead. And He was raised "so that" He might be the faithful high priest, the one who perfectly keeps the testimony of God's mouth forever. He is the ultimate answer to this prayer.
Because of this, when we find ourselves in the smoke, we are not alone. Our sufferings are now united to His. When we feel like a shriveled wineskin, we must remember that we are in union with the one who was crushed for our iniquities. When we cry out, "When will you comfort me?" we are echoing the dereliction cry of our Savior, who was forsaken so that we would never be. And when we plead, "Revive me," we are appealing to the same covenant love that raised Jesus from the dead. The power that brought Christ out of the tomb is the same power at work in you, to keep you, to preserve you, and to revive you, so that you too might keep the testimony of His mouth, for His glory and your everlasting joy.