Sweeter than Honey 6

Text: Psalm 119:81-88

Last week we discussed the goodness of God in the face of Affliction. In the Caph stanza we find that his prolonged affliction has brought him low physically, mentally, and spiritually.

The author is beaten and stands at a desperate point of salvation.

He looks at himself as an destroyed canteen.

Psalm 119:83 KJV 1900

For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; Yet do I not forget thy statutes.

The author uses a striking analogy to describe the frailty of his condition. He is a bottle left in the smoke.

Because we’re unfamiliar with ancient practices, sometimes it’s difficult for modern readers to understand Jesus’s parables. In Jesus’s day, people used animal skins-like goatskin-for storing liquids.

Bottle Picture...

Remember that the word bottle is not like a coke bottle that comes to our mind. Rather he is speaking of a leather bag that would swing by the shoulder of a traveler. This bottle or wineskin would care anything from wine, to water, to oil. Depending on the need of the owner.

What you might know about a skin is that smoke will have an adverse reaction to the leather.

Psalms 2. Appreciating Weakness and Trusting God and His Word (83–84)

A wineskin in smoke was “Useless, shriveled, and unattractive because of being blackened with soot.” (VanGermen)

The writer is not speaking of feeling bad. But rather a numbness that comes from extended periods of pain and hurt.

vs 81 - my soul fainteth

vs 82 - When wilt thou comfort me?

vs 84 - How many days (can I make it that long?)

vs 86 - They persecute me wrongfully.

vs 87 - They had almost consumed me.

He was used to hearing so much bad news that he forgot what good news feels like.

He has lost sight of Roger C. Anderson advised when he felt he spent far more days as the statue and not enough as the pigeon.

“The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our heart upon the black horse of affliction.” Charles H. Spurgeon

The author has not lost all hope. It is in the helplessness of the situation that you see what he author is most clinging too.

Shocker its God’s Word.

“I hope in thy word”

“I do not forget thy statues”

“I forsook not thy precepts”

“I shall keep the testimony of thy mouth”

This is the essence of this passage. When affliction comes where do you place your trust. Where do you put your trust.

Consider another time the wineskins are mentioned...

While John the Baptist sat in prison, his disciples would come back and give him reports about what Jesus was doing. These reports must have been troubling for John. The prophet had led an ascetic lifestyle, denying himself choice foods, alcohol, and fine clothes (Luke 1:15, Mark 1:6). And he was hearing that Jesus was gathering with sinners, feasting and drinking (Matthew 11:18-19), and not following the rules of the Pharisees.

John was desperately trying to understand what was happening. At one point, Matthew tells us about this exchange:

Matthew 9:14–15 KJV 1900

Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.

The Jewish people linked fasting to mourning. A wedding celebration isn’t the time for denying oneself; it’s a time for celebrating.

Jesus promises that the time for mourning was coming, but this wasn’t it. And then Jesus offers one of the parables that He’ll come to be known for:

Matthew 9:16–17 KJV 1900

No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

New wine and old wineskins

Fermented drinks like wine expanded, and since an old wineskin would already be stretched to its limit, the new wine would tear the seams.

This is why new wine needed to be preserved in new wineskins. As the wine expanded, the new skins would stretch to accommodate it.

Jesus was here to do something completely new. If John (or anyone else) tried to make sense of it through a lens of old expectations and regulations, they’d miss the amazing thing that was happening.

Through Jesus, God was redeeming the world to Himself. And if people expected this to look familiar to what God had done before, they wouldn’t understand.

Modern Christians have the benefit of hindsight. We get to see the whole picture in a way that makes sense. Those who chose to follow Jesus in the first century struggled with a lot of confusion. Was this Messiah going to conquer their enemies? Why did Jesus behave so differently than other rabbis? Why was the religious establishment so angry with Him? Questions like these would have created a lot of unrest and anxiety in His Jewish audience.

We bust when we are trying to get results...

Jesus encouraged contemporaries to quit focusing on how His behavior fit in the current religious climate. Instead, He told them to focus on the fruit of His ministry.

When our trust in God is based on our expectations we will wither, harden, even break. The author of Psalms is saying that he has learned that this wine skin will stay useful only when it trusts God with the outcome. The fruit of God’s work in affliction is left in God’s hands. I’ll trust that his word is still right and that his character presented in that word is the truth.

The disciples and John had to learn this about our savior. Expectations hurt our ability to trust. In that lack of trust the heart withers and hardens.

The heart that trusts God’s word find a well spring of life that keeps him fresh and new.