Latest / Reformed Thinking / When My Soul Faints, I Still Hope in Your Word (Psalm 119:81–88) | Charles Spurgeon

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When My Soul Faints, I Still Hope in Your Word (Psalm 119:81–88) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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  You know that feeling when you just, well, when you hit the
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  wall, maybe you're out running or maybe you're just trying to
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  get through a double shift at work, right?
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  Yeah. Your muscles just turn to lead.
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  Your lungs are burning. Your brain starts sending out
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  these massive panic signals basically telling you to just
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  lie down on the floor and stop moving.
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  Every single step takes this conscious act of will, and even
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  that will is just running dry. It's total exhaustion.
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  Yeah, now take that total physical collapse and apply it
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  to your soul. What happens when your spirit
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  hits the wall? Welcome to Reformed Thinking.
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  Today we're bringing you a special deep dive, and we're
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  going to take a really extensive verse by verse look at Psalm
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  119. Specifically, we'll be looking
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  at verses 81 through 88. Spot on, and we are pulling
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  heavily from Charles Spurgeon's massive commentary, The Treasury
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  of David. Now, before we start, we need to
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  lay down a ground rule for today's discussion.
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  We want this to be a calm, measured theological discussion.
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  So the rule is we're going to let each other finish our
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  thoughts completely. No talking over one another, no
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  rushing the points. I think that's a great rule.
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  The pace of our conversation really needs to match the
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  gravity of the text we're looking at.
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  And you know, because we are looking at this through the lens
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  of Reformed theology, specifically adhering to the
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  Westminster Confession, we really need to take our time to
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  see how the text exposes 3 distinct theological realities.
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  OK, let's lay those out for the listener.
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  What are the three realities? So first, we'll see God's
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  absolute sovereignty right in the middle of severe trials.
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  Second, we're going to look at the total depravity of the
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  wicked who oppose God's people. And 3rd, we'll observe the
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  preservation of the Saints. Which is really about how the
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  believer is kept alive by the truth of Scripture, right?
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  Rather than their own strength. Precisely.
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  Those doctrines frame everything we're going to talk about today.
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  And we really need that strong framework because the text
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  itself is incredibly dark. So for those who don't know,
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  Psalm 119 is divided into section space on the Hebrew
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  alphabet. This specific 8 verse section
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  corresponds to the Hebrew letter calf.
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  Right. And Spurgeon actually calls this
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  specific section the midnight of the entire Psalm.
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  The Midnight. Wow.
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  Yeah, it's a place of extreme anguish.
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  The writer is at the absolute end of his human strength.
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  But before we look at the verses, we should probably look
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  at the letter calf itself. Oh, definitely.
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  So historical commentators like Jerome and Ambrose, they pointed
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  out that the letter calf physically signifies the
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  hollowed hand. The hollowed hand.
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  Yeah. Now, some people historically
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  thought this meant, you know, a hand curved in penitence or
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  maybe the bowed posture of an old soldier.
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  But Jerome and Amber's argued that the true meaning is found
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  in the physical action of a beggar.
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  That's such a striking image. It is.
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  Picture a beggar holding out a hollowed hand.
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  It's completely empty. They possess nothing and they're
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  just waiting for another person to play something into it.
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  And that physical posture, that hollowed hand, really dictates
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  the tone of the entire section. I mean, the psalmist is not
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  approaching God with a list of his own accomplishment.
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  No, not at all. He's not offering a trade, he's
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  coming with an entirely empty hand.
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  When a beggar hollows his hand, he's acknowledging his complete
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  lack of resources. He can't feed himself, he can't
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  protect himself and he can't change his circumstances.
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  All he can do is wait for mercy. Right, and this perfectly
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  illustrates the reformed understanding of grace.
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  We bring absolutely nothing to our salvation except the sin
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  that makes it necessary. The believer in this song has
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  been drained of all natural strength, all optimism, all
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  self-reliance. The trial has emptied him out,
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  leaving only that hallowed hand. So keep that picture of the
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  empty hand in your mind. As we look at verse 81.
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  The psalmist cries out, My soul fainteth for thy salvation, but
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  I hope in thy word. And then he continues right into
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  verse 82. And mine eyes fail for thy word,
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  saying, When wilt thou comfort me?
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  It's just devastating to read. It really is.
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  These verses are describing A crushing physical reaction to
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  spiritual waiting. It's not just sadness, it's a
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  physiological breakdown. Thomas Manton, the Puritan
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  clergyman, he offers a breakdown of the distinction between
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  weariness and fainting. And I think that really helps
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  clarify what the psalmist is experiencing here.
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  Oh, Manton is great on this. He makes a crucial medical and
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  spiritual distinction. He explains that weariness is a
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  lessening of strength, where the active faculties are simply
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  weakened. The body just requires rest.
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  You sit down, you take a breath, and you recover.
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  Right like after a long walk. Exactly.
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  Fainting, on the other hand, is a much higher degree of
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  deficiency. In fainting, the vital forces
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  contract and retire, the blood actually leaves the extremities,
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  the outward parts are left senseless and the person just
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  collapses So. When a man is wearied, his
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  strength is abated, but when he faints, he is completely spent.
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  Yes, and Manton applies this physiological reality directly
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  to the soul. You're weary when your moral
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  strength abates under suffering, but you faint when all the
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  reasons and grounds of your comfort are completely used up.
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  You feel like you can hold out no longer.
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  The spiritual vital signs drop precipitously.
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  The spiritual system is just shutting down.
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  But right in the middle of that collapse, we find this amazing
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  tension. The psalmist says his soul
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  faints, yet in the exact same breath he says, But I hope in my
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  word. It's quite a paradox.
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  It is he spiritually prostate, unable to fix his situation.
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  But the fainting is met with hope.
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  And Charles Spurgeon has this metaphor for how this works that
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  I just love. He says hope acts as the
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  smelling bottle of the promise. The smelling bottle that is
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  classic Spurgeon. Right.
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  It keeps the fainting soul conscious.
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  When someone passes out, smelling salts jolt the nervous
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  system back to reality. The sharp scent forces the
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  person to wake up. In the same way, the believer
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  who collapses under the weight of affliction is revived by the
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  sharp, bracing reality of God's promise, salvation.
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  The promise literally shocks the spiritual system back awake.
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  And the mechanics of that smelling bottle are tied
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  directly to the nature of the promise itself.
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  The believer isn't hoping in some vague sense of optimism.
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  They are hoping in a specific word spoken by a sovereign God.
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  Right. It's a concrete promise, yeah.
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  When we think of hoping, we often conceptualize it as a
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  passive state. We picture someone sitting
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  quietly in a waiting room, leafing through a magazine, just
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  passing the time until their name is called.
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  But the language of the text suggests something rigorous and
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  depleting, this hoping, this waiting for salvation, drains
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  the absolute last reserves of energy.
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  We often think of waiting as doing nothing, which makes it
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  really hard to understand how waiting can cause fainting.
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  But think of a watchman. Picture a watchman standing on a
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  high wall in the middle of the night, staring out into the
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  pitch black darkness, looking for a signal fire that was
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  promised to appear. There's a great analogy.
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  If you stare into the dark long enough, your vision actually
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  begins to blur. Your eyes water.
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  They ache. You start seeing things that
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  aren't even there. The eyes literally fail from the
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  sheer intensity of the gaze. The hoping isn't passive, it's a
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  straining of every faculty toward the promise.
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  You're actively searching the horizon for God's intervention,
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  and that search is exhausting. You know, the notes from Joseph
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  Roberts in our source material provide a really fascinating
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  cultural illustration of that feeling vision.
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  He describes a scenario in the East where a mother promises to
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  visit her child. OK.
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  If the child goes out and watches the road for days,
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  straining to see the mother's approach, and she's delayed, the
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  child might say, a speck has grown on my eye.
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  I cannot see. My eyes have failed me.
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  Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a physical reaction
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  to delayed comfort. The intense looking creates A
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  physiological deficit. The believers looking so hard
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  for the promise comfort from God that they're spiritual and
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  sometimes even physical vision begins to dim.
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  The eyes fail because the expectation is so high and the
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  delay is so long. That speck on the eye is a
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  heartbreaking image. You look so hard for relief that
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  you actually damage your ability to see.
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  And you know, this is where Reformed theology provides a
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  massive foundation underneath that fainting believer.
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  Absolutely. Because when your eyes fail and
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  the night is dark, what do you actually do?
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  The Scottish Presbyterian theologian Samuel Rutherford
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  addressed this directly. He said believe under a cloud
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  and wait for him when there is no moonlight nor Starlight.
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  Beautiful. He goes on to warn against
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  unbelieving hearts which quote, Father lies upon Christ.
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  He asks who dreameth that a promise of God can fail, fall a
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  swoon, or die. Rutherford shows that faith must
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  rest solely on God's decree, not on our visible circumstances.
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  If you're waiting in the pitch black and your eyes have failed
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  you, your faith does not rely on your ability to see the light.
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  It relies on the unalterable fact that God has spoken.
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  Because the flesh demands visible evidence.
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  The flesh wants the moonlight and the Starlight to validate
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  the promise. It wants to see the signal fire
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  on the horizon just to know the waiting is almost over.
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  Yeah, we always want to sign. We do.
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  But true faith, as Rutherford points out, can read God's
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  thoughts of love and peace even under the cloud.
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  The promise itself is the light, and you know, the physical toll
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  of waiting with failing eyes naturally points us toward the
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  physical environment the believers enduring.
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  Right, because he's not waiting in a vacuum.
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  Exactly. The psalmist is not waiting in a
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  clean, quiet room. He's waiting in a hostile
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  environment. Which brings us to the imagery
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  of the furnace in verse 83. The environment completely
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  dictates the severity of the waiting.
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  Let me just read verse 83, for I am become like a bottle in the
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  smoke. Yet do I not forget thy
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  statutes? Now when you hear the word
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  bottle, you probably picture glass or plastic.
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  You think of something rigid and clean.
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  But to grasp what the Psalmist is saying, we really need to
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  understand the ancient Near Eastern context.
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  Thomas Harmer and John Gatsby provide historical background on
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  what this bottle actually was, and it changes the entire
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  meaning of the verse. It really does.
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  Harmon Gatsby explained that the bottle mentioned here is a
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  leather skin, typically a goat skin, used for holding liquids
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  like water or wine. And in the tent of a common
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  Arab, there are no chimneys. The fire is built in the center
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  of the habitation and the smoke simply fills the room before
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  eventually seeping out through the tent fabric.
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  The smoke just coats everything inside.
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  I can almost smell it. Yeah, it's intense.
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  When a leather skin is emptied and hung up in that tent, it's
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  constantly subjected to the heat, the soot and the dry air.
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  The leather becomes blackened thoroughly, smoke dried,
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  shriveled, wrinkled and hardened almost to the point of cracking.
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  It becomes an ugly, fragile, seemingly useless object.
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  Think about feeling past your expiration date.
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  You look at the toll your trials have taken on you and you
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  compare yourself to a piece of discarded, dried out leather.
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  You feel useless and forgotten in a dusty room.
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  The vitality has just been baked right out of you, leaving only a
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  rigid, fragile shell. You look in the mirror and you
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  don't see strength. You see the soot and the
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  wrinkles caused by years of enduring the heat.
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  And that physical and emotional fragility is precisely what the
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  enemy targets. The Puritan Richard Gilpin wrote
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  a whole treatise on Satan's temptations, pointing out how
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  the adversary exploits this specific state.
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  How so? Well, Gilpin notes that the body
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  and soul are intimately tied together.
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  They share in each other's good and bad estates.
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  Satan uses the physical distress, the literal smoke of
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  the affliction, the failing health, the exhausted nerves,
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  the chronic pain to cause spiritual distress.
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  That makes a lot of sense. He knows that grief in the heart
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  acts like a moth in a garment, silently consuming the body.
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  Atan's tactic is to make the sorrow of the mind roduce
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  weakness in the body and then use that bodily weakness to
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  augment the trouble of the mind. He wants to create a feedback
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  loo of misery. He hopes that when the believers
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  physical strength gives out when they feel like that useless
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  blackened bottle, they'll just surrender and abandoned God
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  statutes. So if the smoke is so
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  destructive, and if Satan uses that environment to try and
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  break our faith, why does God allow His children to hang in
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  the smoke? We know God is absolute
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  sovereign over the placement of that tent and the fire burning
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  inside it. The enemy does not control the
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  thermostat. No, he certainly doesn't.
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  So the notes from Rosenmiller give us the insight into why the
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  smoke is actually necessary. He explains that the ancients
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  didn't accidentally leave their wineskins in the smoke.
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  They intentionally hung the wineskins there to mellow the
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  wine through the gradual ascent of the heat.
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  The affliction, the heat, and the smoke are sovereignly
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  designed to ripen the soul. God is not a negligent
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  householder who forgot his wineskin in a smoky room.
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  He's the master vintner. The gradual heat of the
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  affliction burns off the impurities of the flesh, it
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  humbles the pride, it dries up the carnal desires, and it
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  matures the spiritual graces inside.
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  That is such a huge perspective shift.
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  It is Wolfgang Musculus comments on this, noting that a bottle in
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  the smoke has very little inflation or outward beauty.
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  God wastes away the flesh so the divine gifts may find room.
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  The glory and eagerness of the flesh must be emptied out.
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  We're right back to the hallowed hand.
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  Yes, God's commandments cannot be well kept in bottles that are
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  swollen and inflated with pride. The smoke deflates the vessel so
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  it can properly hold the grace. And despite the heat, the soot,
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  and the shriveling of the flesh, we see an incredible victory at
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  the end of the verse. Yet do I not forget thy
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  statutes? The believer is reduced to skin
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  and bone. All natural comforts are dried
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  out, but the grace placed inside the believer by the Holy Spirit
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  survives the smoke. The soot cannot suffocate true
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  saving faith. Exactly.
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  This illustrates the perseverance of the Saints.
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  The outward beauty may be blasted, as Manton says, but the
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  holy frame of the soul remains entirely intact.
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  The grace survives even when the vessel looks totally ruined.
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  And the survival of that grace proves the inner life is
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  sustained by God Himself, not by outward circumstances.
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  The smoke can ruin the leather, but it cannot destroy the wine
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  inside. However, hanging in the smoke
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  and during that gradual heat feels like an eternity to the
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  person experiencing it. The curing process is slow.
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  Really slow. And that agonizing duration
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  triggers the psalmist desperate questions about timing and
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  justice, which we see in verses 84 and 85.
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  The endurance is stretched to the absolute limit.
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  In verse 84 the psalmist cries out, How many are the days of
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  thy servant? When will thou execute judgment
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  on them that persecute me? And then he details the nature
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  of that persecution in verse 85. The proud have digged pits for
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  me which are not after Thy law. John Calvin clarifies a really
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  helpful theological distinction regarding what David is asking
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  when he says How many are the days of thy servant?
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  What does Calvin say? Calvin points out that David is
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  not having a general existential crisis about human mortality.
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  He's not waxing poetic about the fleeting like of man the way Job
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  does when he says man's days are like a shadow.
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  David is asking a highly specific question about the
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  duration of his current state of warfare.
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  OK. So it's not a broad life is
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  short complaint. Right there's where days denotes
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  A determinate portion of time, like the days of a hired servant
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  who has a set contract. David is asking God, how long
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  have you determined to abandon your servant to the will of the
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  ungodly? How long will you permit this
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  specific trial to last? He assumes there is a set limit
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  and appointed end to the affliction, and he's pleading to
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  know when that end will arrive. He knows the Sovereign decree
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  has a timer attached to it. Wait, isn't it sinful to
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  question God's timing? We are often taught to submit
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  quietly and never ask why or when.
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  I mean, the Israelites grumbled in the desert about their
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  circumstances and faced severe punishment.
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  What is the dividing line between sinful grumbling and
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  faithful impatience? Is David crossing a line by
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  interrogating the Almighty about the schedule of his deliverance?
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  That's a really valid question. Wolfgang Musculus flips that
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  assumption on its head, showing how this specific question
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  actually operates as an act of faith.
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  An act of faith? How so?
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  The dividing line comes down to the premise of the question, the
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  Israelites grumbled from a premise of unbelief.
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  They accused God of bringing them into the desert to kill
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  them. They doubted his goodness.
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  Musculus argues that David's impatience proves his confidence
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  in future salvation. Oh, I see.
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  Yeah. If David believed God was
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  powerless or that his enemies were going to win, he wouldn't
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  ask when God was going to execute judgement.
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  He would just despair. The fact that he asks when
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  demonstrates his absolute certainty that God will judge
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  the wicked and will deliver His servant.
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  He assumes the fact of the deliverance based on God's
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  character. He is simply asking for the
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  date. So his question is born out of a
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  robust theology of God's justice.
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  Exactly. He knows the scales will be
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  balanced. The intense pressure of the
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  trial just makes him long for that day to arrive sooner.
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  That longing for justice makes perfect sense when you look at
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  the physical reality of what he's enduring in verse 85.
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  The proud have digged pits. For me.
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  This is not casual bullying. This is a calculated, laborious
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  act of malice. John Gatsby provides historical
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  context about what digging a pit meant.
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  The context here is terrifying. It is.
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  Hunters in the ancient Near East would dig deep pits by the side
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  of the river, cover them with straw and use them to catch
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  crocodiles. Sometimes they would shut
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  prisoners up in these pits and leave them to die of thirst.
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  The sheer amount of physical labor, planning and deceit
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  required to dig a deep pit and camouflage is staggering.
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  You have to haul away the dirt. You have to build a false floor.
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  It shows an absolute obsession with destroying the righteous.
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  And that obsession brings us face to face with the doctrine
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  of total depravity. The enemies are not making
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  mistakes. Their wills are entirely bent
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  against God and His people. Total depravity means every
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  faculty of the human soul is tainted by sin, and without
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  God's intervention, the natural man is at war with God's law.
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  It's a complete rebellion. Yes, Thomas Manton points out
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  that God's Law in Exodus 21 expressly forbade leaving pits
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  open where even tame beasts could fall in.
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  The law protected livestock from this kind of hidden danger.
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  By digging these pits for a human being, the wicked are
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  deliberately and flagrantly defying God's law.
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  They are studying how to trap God's servant and direct
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  opposition to the Creator's commands.
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  They know the law and they actively work to subvert it.
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  And William Kemper notes the strange irony of their pride in
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  doing so. He points out that it seems
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  strange a proud man should be a digger of pits.
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  A proud man usually wants to elevate himself right to stand
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  on a pedestal and be seen above everyone else.
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  Right. That's the nature of pride.
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  But pride will submit itself. It will Crouch down.
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  It will stoop to the dirt and do the filthy, exhausting work of
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  digging a hole in the ground just to gain an advantage over
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  the righteous. The proud man will debase
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  himself to the lowest possible level, covering his hands in mud
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  just for the satisfaction of watching the godly fall.
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  It's a terrifying picture of how hatred for God's law completely
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  distorts human behavior. The proud man becomes a laborer
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  for his own malice. And the exhaustion of navigating
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  a landscape filled with these hidden, maliciously dug traps
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  forces the believer to a breaking point when every single
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  step could lead to a sudden fall.
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  You can't rely on your own ability to spot the danger.
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  Your eyes are already failing, as we saw in verse 82.
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  You can't trust your vision to see the camouflage straw over
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  the pit. Exactly.
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  You must seek an external anchor.
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  This constant peril drives the psalmist away from his own
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  circumstances and toward the unshakable truth of God's Word,
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  which shifts our focus to verses 86 and 87.
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  After describing the pits and the persecution, the psalmist
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  pivots. He says in verse 86, all thy
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  commandments are faithful. They persecute me wrongfully,
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  help thou me. And then in verse 87, they'd
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  almost consumed me upon earth, but I forsook not thy precepts.
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  Calvin recognizes the primary ambush Satan is trying to spring
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  here, and it's not just the physical danger of falling into
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  the hole in the ground. No.
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  The physical pits and the outward persecution are
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  secondary tactics. Satan's primary goal, his
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  ultimate ambush, is psychological and theological
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  warfare. He wants to convince the
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  believer that God's promises are false, that the commandments are
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  not faithful, and that God has entirely abandoned them.
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  It's an attack on the mind. Absolutely.
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  When the believer is standing on the edge of the pit, looking at
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  the malice of the wicked and smelling the smoke of the tent,
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  Satan whispers. Look at your situation.
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  God has deceived you. His word has failed.
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  If he loved you, you would not be here.
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  The counter attack to that specific satanic lie is the firm
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  theological declaration we see at the start of verse 86.
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  All thy commandments are faithful.
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  The believer beats back the deception by violently affirming
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  the truth of God's character, even when the circumstances
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  scream otherwise. Having affirmed God's character,
• 20:39
  the Psalmist utters what Matthew Henry calls a comprehensive
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  golden prayer. It's just 4 words in our English
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  translation and three in the Hebrew.
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  Help thou me. It's so simple.
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  When you are dodging camouflaged pits, when you're choking on the
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  smoke of the tent, when your eyes are failing from staring
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  into the dark, you don't have the breath for a long, eloquent
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  theological monologue. You can't string together
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  complex sentences with perfect syntax, and you don't need to
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  help thou me. It acknowledges complete
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  helplessness on the part of the believer and complete
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  sufficiency on the part of God. It brings the empty, hallowed
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  hand right up to the throne of Heaven. 4 words are enough to
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  engage the sovereign strength of the universe.
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  And that brief prayer is answered by a theological
• 21:25
  reality found in the specific phrasing of verse 87.
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  The psalmist says they'd almost consumed me upon earth.
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  Those two words upon earth establish A strict absolute
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  limit to the power of the wicked.
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  I love that phrase upon earth. It's crucial God has placed a
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  boundary line around the malice of the proud.
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  They can exhaust their energy digging pits.
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  They can unleash the smoke of slander and persecution.
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  But they can only touch earthly goods and earthly life.
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  The reach stops cold at the boundary of the temporal world.
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  They have 0 jurisdiction in the heavenlies.
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  That means the enemy's jurisdiction is entirely local
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  to this fallen world. The theologian Maluris points
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  out the consequence of this boundary.
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  He says the believer already possesses A heavenly life by
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  faith. Even if the enemies succeed in
• 22:10
  their earthly plots, even if the body is taken, the eternal
• 22:14
  portion remains untouched. Untouchable.
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  The wicked cannot reach into heaven to steal the believers
• 22:19
  inheritance, and they cannot reach into the believer's soul
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  to extinguish the grace planted there by the Holy Spirit.
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  This illustrates the perseverance and preservation of
• 22:28
  the Saints. The Holy Spirit actively guards
• 22:31
  the new nature against the assaults of the world.
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  Because the believer is true, life is heavenly.
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  The enemy's ultimate weapon, death itself, is rendered
• 22:39
  ineffective. The wicked think they are
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  consuming the believer, but they are only destroying the outer
• 22:43
  shell. The dried up leather bottle.
• 22:45
  The precious contents, the soul sealed by God, are utterly
• 22:49
  beyond their reach, and because the believer understands their
• 22:52
  true vitality is not of this earth, their final plea in this
• 22:56
  section is not for a change in their earthly circumstances.
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  They don't ask for a better tent.
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  Right. They don't ask for a safer Rd.
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  they ask for an infusion of that divine heavenly life.
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  Which leads us to the final verse of this midnight section.
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  Let me read verse 88. Quicken me after that loving
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  kindness. So shall I keep the testimony of
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  thy mouth. There's a surprising twist here.
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  After all the complaining about the soot and the smoke, after
• 23:21
  detailing the malicious pits dug by the proud, and after
• 23:25
  describing the failing of his own eyes, the psalmist doesn't
• 23:28
  ask for what we would naturally expect.
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  Not all. He doesn't say Take Me Out of
• 23:32
  the smoke. He doesn't say fill in the pits.
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  He says quicken me, make me alive, give me life.
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  He goes straight to the root of the matter.
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  Adam Clark, the British theologian, observes how the
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  psalmist wants this new life delivered.
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  He asked to be quickened after thy loving kindness.
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  He doesn't want to be raised from his spiritual death.
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  Swoon by the Thunder of God's terrifying majesty.
• 23:53
  Because the Thunder would just crush the dried leather bottle
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  entirely. Precisely, He wants to be
• 23:58
  revived by the tender, familiar voice of a father's loving
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  kindness. And the purpose of this revived
• 24:04
  life is entirely outward facing toward God.
• 24:08
  It's not so he can feel better or enjoy an easier life, he
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  says. So shall I keep the testimony of
• 24:13
  thy mouth. The new life is explicitly for
• 24:17
  the purpose of renewed obedience.
• 24:19
  That's the goal. Charles Bridges stresses that we
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  must view Scripture as coming directly from the literal mouth
• 24:25
  of God. The psalmist wants the life of
• 24:27
  God in him so he can obey the word of God spoken to him.
• 24:30
  We have discussed total depravity, God's sovereignty,
• 24:33
  and the preservation of the Saints.
• 24:35
  But what does this mean for you, the listener, when you wake up
• 24:37
  exhausted? True religion at its core
• 24:40
  consists of the life of God placed into the soul of man.
• 24:44
  When you feel like that dried out skin bottle hanging the
• 24:46
  smoke, when your circumstances are dark and your energy is
• 24:49
  gone, the solution is not always a change of scenery.
• 24:52
  Escaping the tent does not fix the deadness inside.
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  No, it doesn't. Sometimes the most effective
• 24:58
  prayer you can pray is for renewed inner life to withstand
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  the environment you are sovereignly placed in.
• 25:04
  Quicken Me is the prayer that brings Heaven's vitality into
• 25:08
  earth smoke. As we conclude our analysis of
• 25:11
  these 8 verses, I want to leave you with the final thought
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  drawing all the way back to where we started.
• 25:16
  Think back to the Hebrew letter calf, the hallowed hand, the
• 25:21
  empty hand of the beggar. When you are entirely emptied by
• 25:24
  suffering, when the smoke of affliction has dried up, all
• 25:27
  your natural strength and self-reliance.
• 25:29
  When the pits is stripped away, your confidence in your own
• 25:32
  ability to walk safely, you feel ruined.
• 25:35
  But consider the possibility that in that exact moment of
• 25:37
  absolute depletion, your hallowed hand is finally in the
• 25:41
  right shape to hold the grace God has been waiting to pour
• 25:43
  out. The strength had to be removed
• 25:45
  so the hand could be opened. The emptiness prepares you for
• 25:48
  the bounty. You can't receive a gift if your
• 25:51
  hands are full of your own strength.
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  Thank you for joining us on this deep dive for reformed thinking.
• 25:57
  Keep holding out that hallowed hand.
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  Keep looking to the promise, even when your eyes fail.
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  And we will meet you right back here next time as we keep
• 26:03
  looking at the unending depths of the word.