Come and See What God Has Done

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1. Observe

   What are the three movements of the psalm?

   • Past, present, future
   • Vv. 1-7: universal call to all the earth; vv. 8-12: communal "we" recounting refinement; vv. 13-20: individual "I" testimony of answered prayer
   • Lament, praise, lament
   • Three identical calls to worship

2. Observe

   What does verses 10-12 say God did, and what was the outcome?

   • God ignored them; they perished
   • God tested and refined them as silver; brought them into prison, laid a burden on their backs, caused men to ride over their heads, took them through fire and water — but brought them out into a wealthy place
   • God avoided them
   • Only difficulty, no outcome

3. Interpret

   How does knowing that God refines through difficulty (not in spite of it) change the experience of hardship?

   • Hardship becomes easier to enjoy
   • Hardship is denied
   • Hardship is reframed as purposeful rather than meaningless; it is something God is doing, not just something happening; this does not remove the pain but locates it within a redemptive story whose end is the "wealthy place"; faith can therefore look for the refining work in the fire rather than only resenting the heat
   • Hardship should be sought out

4. Interpret

   What does it mean to "cherish" sin (v. 18), and how does it differ from struggling against sin?

   • They are identical
   • To cherish sin is to favor it, hold it secretly, protect it, refuse to let it go — it is sin retained and loved despite knowing better; struggling against sin, by contrast, is conflict with sin one wants to be free of; the difference matters because cherished sin closes the ear of God to prayer (the heart prays one thing while loving its opposite), whereas struggling against sin can coexist with answered prayer because the will is aligned with God against the sin
   • Cherishing sin is harmless
   • Struggle is the same as cherishing

5. Apply

   What is a personal testimony that could be declared as in verse 16?

   • Generic platitudes
   • Borrowed stories
   • A specific act of God in the believer's own life — a particular deliverance, healing, provision, conversion, or sustaining grace that can be named with detail; the psalm's "I" invites every believer to fill in concrete content rather than vague praise; the discipline of identifying and articulating one's own story builds testimony that can strengthen others
   • Silence

6. Apply

   How does the arc from prison through fire to a wealthy place teach about God's purpose in difficulty?

   • Difficulty is meaningless
   • The arc shows that God's people pass through real hardship — confinement, burden, opposition, fire, water — and that none of it is wasted; the destination is a "wealthy place" (Hebrew *revayah*, a place of abundance/refreshment); this trains the believer to expect both the fire and the deliverance, to refuse despair in the middle, and to trust the arc even before reaching the end
   • The wealthy place is only material
   • Fire is its own destination

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