It’s testimony time! Not mine but the poet’s, who went through a time of “affliction” or divine chastening but who came out better for it (67, 71). Perhaps it involved a smear campaign or character assassination by “the insolent” (69) or some sort of financial loss of “gold and silver” (72). (Anyone who has seen their financial investments plummet by 17% or more during the COVID-19 pandemic might be able to identify.) But here the psalm writer acknowledged how well Yahweh dealt with him during that time (65). He affirmed his faith in God’s commandments (66). The affliction accomplished its purpose: to arrest his wawardness and to give him an education in obedience (67, 71) and teach him the superiority of God’s law over anything the world considers valuable (72). As has been said often , “some lessons are learnt the hard way.” For this man it was by suffering affliction. I think the main lesson the man learned, and which I, too, must learn and never forget, is finding God to be “good” and his “discipline “good” (68) in those times. I’m sure it didn’t “feel good” at the time, but through it all he learned obedience through what he suffered, and he learned more about the unchanging character of God. This reminds me of the Lord Jesus Christ and the path to maturity and the perfection of character he learned as a man through what he suffered. (You can read about this in Hebrews 2:10; 5:8-9; and 7:28.) Though Jesus never “went astray,” he learned obedience through suffering and became “perfect” for all of his imperfect people (like me). From Hebrews 12:5-6, I know that I must not “despise the chastening of the Lord nor be discouraged when he rebukes” me because God’s love is what motivates his chastening. This is exactly what the poet experienced. So, let it not be considered trite for me or any of God’s afflicted people to say today and every day, “God is good! All the time!” For he truly is, even when it hurts.
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