PSALM 73 - Reviewing the Game Film

Introduction

A couple of years ago Russ Rose, the head coach of the Penn State women’s volleyball team, retired after 43 years and 1,330 career wins and a total of seven NCAA National Championships (four of them consecutive years!) Unlike some coaches who tended to be very animated on the sidelines, Rose was well-known for his laid-back demeanor. When he got up out of his chair to talk to the ref, you knew he was upset!

Like any coach of his caliber, he understood the old saying, “Don’t let one loss beat you twice”. Instead of getting anxious or brittle about losing a big game, Rose knew how to analyze and investigate how that loss happened, and figure out how to learn from it so that the mistakes or oversights or lack of planning that caused that loss would not go on to cost them another game in the future. It’s the old trusty process of “looking at the game film”—going over the match play by play, rotation by rotation, to see where his strategy or planning or execution could improve so that the next time his team hit the court they were ready to win where they had previously lost.

This is the first of eleven psalms that we have that are “Psalms of Asaph”. Asaph was a musician from the tribe of Levi whom King David put in charge of the worship music that was performed at the Tabernacle before Solomon built the Temple (1 Chronicles 16:7). And this psalm feels very much like an athlete reviewing the “game film” of a loss—not losing a sports match, but losing a battle with unbelief. To borrow the old coaches’ saying, this is an example of “don’t let one sin beat you twice”. In his magnificent book, The Mortification of Sin, John Owen writes:

“This is the way men deal with their enemies. They search out their plans, ponder their goals, and consider how and by what means they have prevailed in the past. Then, they can be defeated. This is a most important strategy. If you do not utilize this great strategy, your warfare is very primitive. We need to know how sin uses occasions, opportunities, and temptations to gain advantage. Search its pleas, pretences, reasonings, strategies, colours, and excuses. We need to trace this serpent in all of its windings, and to recognize its most secret tricks: ‘This is your usual way, and course; I know what you aim at’ . . . bring it to the law of God and love of Christ” (John Owen, Voices From the Past, p. 56).

And so what I am for us to do this morning is to sit down in the locker room with Asaph, as it were, and review the “game film” of his battle (and near defeat) with the sin of unbelief that had almost caused him to stumble in his walk with God. Because you and I are engaged in this same battle every day—we need to learn the lesson this “game film” shows us. Because what Asaph learned to do is to

COUNTER the attacks of unbelief by COUNTING on the FAITHFULNESS of God

The psalm divides broadly into two sections. In the first sixteen verses, Asaph works to

I. Identify the STRATEGIES of unbelief (Psalm 73:1-16)

Right away in verse 1, Asaph says that he knows that God is good to His people—that those who bear His righteousness are always the object of His goodness and care.

Psalm 73:1 (ESV)

1 Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

But even though he knew that and believed it with all his heart, he was tempted not to:

Psalm 73:2 (ESV)

2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.

And what caused his feet to slip? Why was he tempted to stop believing that God was good to His people? What was it that had tempted him to give in to unbelief?

Psalm 73:3 (ESV)

3 For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

Asaph knew God was good to him and believed that with all his heart. But he slipped into unbelief—doubting the goodness or faithfulness of God when he saw how the wicked and arrogant around him prospered. And here we see the first strategy of unbelief in its attacks—unbelief will try

To make SIN seem SATISFYING (1-7)

Asaph says he was “envious” of the arrogant when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have a pain-free and comfortable life:

Psalm 73:4 (ESV)

4 For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek.

Because they don’t care about breaking the rules, they can make their lives as comfortable as they want—whatever they need to do, they don’t let scruples or morals stand in their way, and so they can coast through life where others have to work hard:

Psalm 73:5 (ESV)

5 They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.

And not only so, but they are proud of the way they game the system and cut corners and trample anyone who gets in their way:

Psalm 73:6 (ESV)

6 Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.

They are fat and happy and rich and powerful and successful:

Psalm 73:7 (ESV)

7 Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies.

And Asaph wishes he were like them. Because envy doesn’t just want what someone else has; envy wants to be who someone else is.

This is one of the first ways that unbelief attacks, Christian—you look at the lives of the enemies of God and begin to think that you wish you had their lives. You wish you could be as comfortable as they are, as rich as they are, as successful or powerful or attractive or popular as they are. Unbelief will work in you to make sin seem satisfying, and in verses 8-12 Asaph warns that unbelief will attempt

To make GOD look IRRELEVANT (vv. 8-12)

Asaph says that these arrogant, satisfied mockers of God can get away with saying anything they want:

Psalm 73:8–9 (ESV)

8 They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. 9 They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.

In Asaph’s day, he had the advantage of only hearing one blasphemous, arrogant talker at a time—but in our day, we are simply flooded with countless arrogant, mocking, blasphemous, outrages attacks on God and His will. Turn on the TV, open a website, scroll through social media, turn on talk radio (if that’s still a thing…) and you will be absolutely deluged with arrogant mouths “set against the heavens”, ridiculing, mocking and outright hating God.

And, Asaph says, God just lets them do it. He doesn’t stop them, He doesn’t shut their mouths; they keep raking in all the monetization on their YouTube channels and keep padding their lives to become even more comfortable. Where is God during all of this? Why doesn’t He intervene and stop them in their blasphemies?

That’s what Asaph goes on to say in verses 10-11:

Psalm 73:10–12 (ESV)

10 Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. 11 And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”

The original Hebrew rendering is tricky here; other translations (such as the Legacy Standard Bible and the King James) render verse 10 as

Psalm 73:10 (LSB)

10 Therefore his people return here, to his place, And waters of fullness are drunk by them.

The idea seeming to be that these wicked and arrogant talkers have an audience that “drinks their fill” of their outrageous statements and then come back for more when the next podcast drops. And the more the revilers run at the mouth in their attacks on God, the more people shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, if God is up there, I guess He doesn’t care!”

Psalm 73:11 (ESV)

11 And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?”

Take careful notes as we go through this game film, beloved—because this is another tactic of unbelief. It will make God look irrelevant; it is one of the oldest tricks in sin’s book, isn’t it? It’s the same lie that the Serpent whispered to Eve when he said, “Did God really say…?”

Trace this serpent of unbelief in all of it windings; recognize its most secret tricks. It tries to make sin seem satisfying, it tries to make God look irrelevant. And in verses 13-16 we see one of the most devastating tactics of unbelief; it seeks

To make RIGHTEOUSNESS feel POINTLESS (v. 13-16)

Asaph’s words in verses 13-14 feel all too familiar, don’t they?

Psalm 73:13–14 (ESV)

13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. 14 For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

“I’ve played by the rules, I’ve held myself to godly standards, I’ve done my best to the Lord in everything I’ve done or said, and where has it gotten me? Kicked around and run over by a world that has no room for integrity or honor.”

Now consider the way unbelief twists our minds here: The first thing to notice is that when we think like this, we are accusing God of “not doing His part”, as if we have indebted Him to make our lives easier because we have been worthy! “God, I have been faithful to you, now you owe me! And if You aren’t going to come through on Your part of the bargain, then it’s not worth it to follow You!”

Do you see just how insidious unbelief is at this point? Just how thoroughly it will attack your faith? There are many people who have walked away from Christ today because they really believed that if they did what they thought He wanted, that He would give them what they wanted. And when they didn’t get what they wanted, they said, “it’s not worth it,” and walked away. They may call it “deconstruction” or “deconversion”, they may say it’s because they have outgrown religion or that their faith is incompatible with the world they live in--but the root of it is the same: Unbelief that was allowed to fester and spread, the sense that God is not worth worshipping, that He is irrelevant, that sin’s false promises are more believable than God’s steadfast lovingkindness.

It seems as though Asaph recognized how destructive that unbelief was in his own life—verse 15

Psalm 73:15 (ESV)

15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

He knew that this unbelief that had a hold of him was threatening to pull him away from God and His people; he knew that he was in danger of falling away, but he seems bewildered as to what to do about it:

Psalm 73:16 (ESV)

16 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,

So, pause the game film here; what do we see? Asaph has been thrown around by unbelief—sin seems satisfying, God looks irrelevant, righteousness feels pointless. And he knows if he continues down this road of letting unbelief have the last word, he is done for. This is the lowest part of the game; he is on the mat; he is ten runs down, unbelief is three touchdowns ahead. So what is Asaph’s play?

Psalm 73:16–17 (ESV)

16 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, 17 until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.

There it is—in order to counter the attacks of unbelief, count on the faithfulness of God:

II. Return to the FUNDAMENTALS of faith (Psalm 73:17-28)

In 1960 the Green Bay Packers, coached by the legendary Vince Lombardi, lost the NFL Championship game against the Philadelphia Eagles, being stopped short of a drive to the goal line that would have won the game (Lombardi’s first and only championship game loss.) The next year, Lombardi gathered the team on the first day of training camp, sat them down in the locker room and held up a pigskin, saying, “Gentlemen—this is a football.” He took them back to the fundamentals of the game, and it paid off—the Packers went on to win their next nine postseason games, a streak that wasn’t matched until Bill Belachik with the Patriots in 2002-2006.

Asaph had his eyes opened to the strategies of unbelief when he entered the sanctuary of God—when he came to God in worship. All of a sudden, everything made sense; all of the lies and manipulations and tactics of unbelief are exposed for what they are when

You put God in the CENTER of your VISION (v. 17)

As one commentator puts it:

“Worship… put[s] God at the center of our vision.… It is vitally important because it is only when God is at the center of our vision that we see things as they really are.” Boice, J. M. (2005). Psalms 42–106: An Expositional Commentary (p. 613). Baker Books.

Unbelief tries to obscure God, tries to take your eyes off of Who He is and what He has done. But when you return to the fundamentals of your faith and look at the world according to His truth, you see through the flimsy schemes and secret tricks of unbelief.

When you put God in the center of your vision,

You understand the PERIL of the WICKED (vv. 18-20)

Psalm 73:18–20 (ESV)

18 Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. 19 How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! 20 Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.

You may be tempted to believe that they are happy and healthy and secure, but the truth is that any moment they might fall to their eternal ruin.

One of our chores growing up was to load our pickup truck with sawdust to use for bedding in our horse stalls. One of the sawmills we used to get sawdust from would blow their sawdust into a huge pile on the side of a hill. Now what had happened was that the enormous weight of this mountain of sawdust created tremendous pressure in its center. The pressure created intense heat, but without oxygen to feed the heat, there were no flames. On the outside it looked like an innocent mound of sawdust, but in several places that red-hot, flameless core of heat was just one shovel-thrust from the oxygen it needed to explode into a life-threatening inferno. Shortly after that trip to the sawmill, Dad and I heard about a neighboring farmer who fell through the thin crust of that sawdust pile into a raging fire beneath and was badly burned. In the same way, the wicked are set by God to walk over the pit of hell on a thin crust of sawdust, and there are innumerable places in that crust so thin that it will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. At any moment, that sawdust might collapse beneath them, pitching them into eternal torment. (Thompson, Psalm 73, Unpublished sermon, 2007)

Asaph says that all of the riches, all of the comforts and privileges and satisfactions of the wicked are as permanent as a dream. Say you have a dream where you win the lottery, or come into a million-dollar inheritance, or live in some beautiful mansion—and then you wake up, what do you have left? Have you ever woken up from a dream like that? There’s this real moment of disappointment, isn’t there? This is the truth behind all of the lies of unbelief, isn’t it? That all of these things that the wicked possess are not to be envied, are they? In fact, they are to be pitied for the destruction that is coming on them!

When Asaph went back to the fundamentals of his faith and put God at the center of his vision, the so-called prosperity of the wicked began to look very different, didn’t it? In fact, once Asaph saw through the strategies of unbelief that were blinding him, he saw how foolish he had been to envy the arrogant:

Psalm 73:21–22 (ESV)

21 When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, 22 I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.

When you go back to the fundamentals of your faith,

You realize the STUPIDITY of your UNBELIEF (vv. 21-22)

That’s the literal translation of the Hebrew word that the ESV translates as “brutish” in verse 22. If it is foolish and stupid to arrogantly blaspheme God and have a heart overflowing with folly, how much more stupid is it to envy those people? Who gets envious of a guy who dreamed that he won the lottery? Once you watch the game film and see how unbelief gets away with its lies, you are able to recognize the play the next time it’s run on you. And the next time you’ll see it coming, and won’t fall for it again!

Counter the attacks of unbelief in your life, Christian, by counting on the faithfulness of God. This is what Asaph comes down to as he closes this psalm. He has played through the game film of his near-defeat to unbelief, and at the end of it he discovers that what he has in God is better than anything that the wicked, arrogant enemies of God could possibly possess. Put God at the center of your vision, Christian, and

You discover the FAITHFULNESS of your SAVIOR (vv. 23-28)

Psalm 73:23–24 (ESV)

23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.

Unbelief will tell you that righteousness is pointless—but Asaph realizes here that in fact, there is no possession on earth that can surpass the joy and satisfaction of being a precious possession of God! Asaph had been distracted by the belongings of the enemies of God and had forgotten that his greatest treasure was that he belonged to God! God Himself holds his hand, God Himself guides him, God Himself has prepared an eternal reward of glory in His presence for him! And there was nothing that his enemies could ever do to take that treasure away from him!

With God and His faithfulness at the center of Asaph’s vision, he saw the possessions and goods and comforts of the wicked for what they were—temporary, insubstantial trinkets that would someday vanish like a dream in the light of the Day of Judgment. And Asaph realized that when it came right down to it there was only one thing that he really wanted:

Psalm 73:25 (ESV)

25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

This is what the sin of unbelief was trying to prevent Asaph from grasping; this is the touchdown, the home run, the golden snitch, the brass ring—because when you come to the realization that God Himself is your greatest treasure, there is nothing on this earth that can draw you away from Him!

And here in the closing verses of this psalm, Asaph turns to regard the unbelief that had captured his heart; he looks squarely at the sin that had dragged him away from His God:

Psalm 73:26 (ESV)

26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Asaph finishes the game film and says, “I blew it. My heart failed to love God as I ought; I believed the lies of sin. I was faithless to the One Who holds me by the hand and guides me into His paths. He is my greatest treasure, but I set my eyes on the silly little trinkets of this world’s wealth and comfort and power and ease.”

And if we are honest with ourselves (and honest in light of God’s Word here) then we have to confess that we have sinned in exactly the same way. Looking at your rich neighbor who mocks you for getting up early for church on Sunday and secretly wishing you could have what he has.

Drinking in the foolish flippancies of the world’s mockery of God’s standards for right and wrong, to the point where compromising those standards doesn’t really bother you. “Everybody thinks its stupid to save myself for marriage, it’s not really that big a deal...” “I don’t really want people to say I am not being loving because of what pronouns someone wants me to use, it’s just easier to go along to get along...”

Harboring resentment against God because you’ve always done your best to live a moral and righteous life, and He hasn’t responded by giving you the kind of life that you want. He holds you by the right hand, He guides every step of your life, He promises you eternal glory with Him as your greatest treasure in Heaven and on earth, and you respond to Him with, “Well, thanks, I guess, but I really was hoping You’d give me the same stuff you gave the wicked!”

If you recognize that failure in your heart and flesh today, then take heart—because the second half of verse 26 is your hope:

Psalm 73:26 (ESV)

26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Asaph said at the beginning of the psalm that his steps had almost slipped (v. 2)—and here at the end of the psalm he says that God was holding his hand the whole time. Asaph may have failed to be true to God in the midst of his struggles with unbelief, but God never failed to be faithful to him!

Christian, is it possible for you to fail Christ? Is it possible to think and act like a brutish beast, believing the lies and false promises of this world and not believing His promises? Absolutely yes. Is it possible for Christ to fail you? For Him to fail to be the strength of your heart and your portion forever? Absolutely not! It is not how firm a grasp you have on Christ that counts—if it were possible for a Christian to fall away from Christ and lose his salvation, every Christian in this room would have done so.

But thanks be to God that it is not your hold on Christ that saves you, it is His hold on you. You can be broken, but the Word cannot be. You can fail, but Christ cannot fail. The failures can all fail Christ, and do. But Christ never fails His failures. And that is your glory, that is your pride, and that is you sole confidence. You may be a “failure”, but you are His failure, and He will never fail you!

And if you have been living your life in the grip of unbelief, believing the lies that this world tells you that you don’t need to be a Christian to be a good person, that belonging by faith to Christ is a mistake because you don’t want to give up the things in your life that you know will have to go when He takes over; if you are trying to hold His mercy and grace at arm’s length because you want to hold on to the vanishing dream of this world’s treasures, understand what Asaph says in the closing words of his psalm--

Psalm 73:27 (ESV)

27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

Friend, hold Him at arm’s length long enough—keep His mercy and grace at bay long enough and someday you will get your wish when that mercy and grace will be withdrawn from you forever. Persist in refusing His grace, and the day will come when you will be too far away from Him to find it. And all you will find at the end will be eternal destruction away from His presence.

But if you draw near to Him by faith today, you will find all of the mercy and grace and peace and joy that you could ever hope for and more:

Psalm 73:28 (ESV)

28 But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.

Jesus Christ has provided the only refuge you need from the consequences of your sin of unbelief. Though He had no sin of His own to pay for, He suffered the death-penalty for sin on that Cross so that you could be forgiven—freely and fully—for all of your unbelief and pride and arrogance and rebellion against Him. You have come into the sanctuary of God today; won’t you look and discern what your end will be if you continue to refuse Him? Repent of your sin, lay down your pride, call on Him to cleanse you from all your unrighteousness by His blood, and receive from Him full forgiveness and a new life in Him that will never end, a life that possesses (and is possessed by) the greatest Treasure in heaven or on earth—your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Ephesians 3:20–21 (ESV)

20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

Why do some people who live sinful lives appear to be well-off and successful? Why do you think God sometimes allows the wicked to go unpunished and continue their mockery and rebellion?

When you strive to live righteously and honor God, why does it sometimes feel like it's pointless or doesn't yield any benefits? How is this an opportunity for unbelief to attack your faith in God?

What does it mean to “return to the fundamentals” of faith in Psalm 73? How does putting God at the center of our vision help us see things as they truly are?

Read Psalm 73:18-20 again. How do these verses help us counter the attacks of unbelief that we experience?

Read verse 17 again. What is the turning point of Asaph’s struggle against unbelief? How does this verse point to the necessity of gathering together for worship regularly? How does a consistent pattern of gathering for worship on Sunday fortify you against the lies that this world tells about following Christ?