Psalm 73
Notes
Transcript
Perspectives
A Psalm of Asaph.
1 Surely God is good to Israel, To those who are pure in heart!
2 But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling, My steps had almost slipped.
3 For I was envious of the arrogant As I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
4 For there are no pains in their death, And their body is fat.
5 They are not in trouble as other men, Nor are they plagued like mankind.
6 Therefore pride is their necklace; The garment of violence covers them.
7 Their eye bulges from fatness; The imaginations of their heart run riot.
8 They mock and wickedly speak of oppression; They speak from on high.
9 They have set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue parades through the earth.
10 Therefore his people return to this place, And waters of abundance are drunk by them.
11 They say, “How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High?”
12 Behold, these are the wicked; And always at ease, they have increased in wealth.
13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence;
14 For I have been stricken all day long And chastened every morning.
15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,” Behold, I would have betrayed the generation of Your children.
16 When I pondered to understand this, It was troublesome in my sight
17 Until I came into the sanctuary of God; Then I perceived their end.
18 Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction.
19 How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors!
20 Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.
21 When my heart was embittered And I was pierced within,
22 Then I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a beast before You.
23 Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand.
24 With Your counsel You will guide me, And afterward receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
27 For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
28 But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.
Introduction
Introduction
American popular Christianity is full of voices that tell us that Christianity is all about making your life better.
That everything becomes easier when you are a Christian.
But seasoned believers will tell you that that is not always the case.
When the Holy Spirit changes your heart from stone to living flesh, your soul is reborn to new life.
But we are still stuck in this fallen flesh, in a fallen world.
So there are internal and external temptations we have to face.
And God has designed trials for us to shape us and prepare us for glory.
They chip away at the ugly exterior of our previous life and conform us to look more like Christ.
So understanding this is a valuable lesson for the believer, and there is wisdom in our pursuit of this truth.
Our text today is about coming to this understanding.
Over half of the Psalms were written by David.
But there are other authors of Psalms and Asaph is one of them.
He wrote 12 Psalms that were placed into the Book of Psalms.
Asaph was one of 3 Levites commissioned by David to be in charge of singing at the Temple.
He served both David and Solomon and was commissioned to sing at the dedication of the temple as we see in 2 Chronicles 5:
11 When the priests came forth from the holy place (for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves, without regard to divisions),
12 and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and kinsmen, clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps and lyres, standing east of the altar, and with them one hundred and twenty priests blowing trumpets
13 in unison when the trumpeters and the singers were to make themselves heard with one voice to praise and to glorify the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice accompanied by trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and when they praised the Lord saying, “He indeed is good for His lovingkindness is everlasting,” then the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud,
14 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.
And during his time he was familiar with both the public and private sides of work at the temple.
He most certainly witnessed much corruption and this frustrated him as a man who had given his life to the worship of God.
And so, he wrote this Psalm as a lament against that corruption.
We can see Asaph grow and use his experiences to teach us how to react when we are frustrated with corruption.
Asaph learned as we must, that…
Every believer must keep a spiritual perspective about what true success is.
Every believer must keep a spiritual perspective about what true success is.
By not becoming frustrated with the success of the foolish and the wicked and the corrupt.
By not becoming frustrated with the success of the foolish and the wicked and the corrupt.
Sometimes life can be very frustrating and confusing.
This is where we find our Psalm writer to be as he studies the lives of the foolish and the wicked around him.
He became envious of those who did not trust in God and it almost caused him to lose his path.
There is a taste of self-righteousness here when he assumes that his work will bring prosperity on this earth or at least that those who are not as holy as him will be less prosperous.
Look at how happy the wicked are. Look at how much stuff they have. Look at how healthy they are.
Look at how hard I have it. Look at how little I have. Look at how sad I am.
His perspective was so focused on the right now and the right in front of me that it put what is really important out of focus.
What he focused on when he looked at the wicked…
v. 4-5 He focused on their health.
4 For there are no pains in their death, And their body is fat.
5 They are not in trouble as other men, Nor are they plagued like mankind.
In a time before universal healthcare, health was not necessarily the normal thing to expect in your life.
It was an indicator of wealth because those who were wealthy were fed better, did less physical work, and had less to stress them in their everyday life.
The Psalmist claimed he saw no pain in there life until they died.
He said that they were fat.
Until modern times in modern nations, food was a thing that was had by the skin of knuckles and the sweat of brows.
Most people struggled against scarcity and starvation.
So when you looked at someone and they weren’t skinny, it was because they were well off and prosperous, because most normal people didn’t have enough substance to be able to maintain that type of figure.
Now we have so much abundance it is hard for us to understand this.
We have so much food that being skinny is the sought after look and takes a lot of work, because of the amount and type of food that is easily attained in this country at this time.
He also observed that their lives seemed easier than others.
That everything they touched went well for them.
Whereas, those that obeyed seemed to have the more difficult path.
The word plagued here means “touched.”
They weren’t touched with disease like the righteous seemed to be.
He focused on their lifestyle. v. 6-9.
6 Therefore pride is their necklace; The garment of violence covers them.
7 Their eye bulges from fatness; The imaginations of their heart run riot.
8 They mock and wickedly speak of oppression; They speak from on high.
9 They have set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue parades through the earth.
The lifestyle of the unbeliever seems to be carefree and easy-going.
From one pursuit of pleasure to the next.
They live their lives without an understanding of eternal things and because of this do not “have” to consider the eternal cost of their actions.
This to the psalmist, who lives his life in every attempt at holiness and honor to God, seems to be the much easier path.
Not just easier, but much better in how it works out in their life.
The unbeliever flaunts his unbelief, he wears like jewelry.
His pursuit of wickedness is like a fashion trend.
What is good and holy and true is held in contempt by these people.
Look how in verse 8 and 9 they are so comfortable in there lifestyle of wickedness that they flap their jaws without feeling any shame for what they are saying.
Right now in our society, it is the sinner who is seen to be the moral one.
One of the catch phrases that has caught on is, “to be on the right side of history.”
This phrase is used when speaking of homosexual marriage, so called, about transgenderism, the climate cult.
Our sinful hearts become so wicked that the things that are right become wrong, and the things that are wrong become right.
This moral inversion is man’s way of shaking his fist at God.
“I will not have you to rule over me.”
“I see that I am made to live like this, but I choose to live in the way that I see fit.”
But the folly is in the wicked's pride.
Asaph says they set their mouths against heaven, that their tongues strut through the earth.
It seems like they have no opposition to their outspoken wickedness.
In popular culture, it is an abomination to speak out against the accepted norm of wicked behavior.
How many quotes can we find of famous people, people that are looked up to by society, that are utterly disgusting and shameful and ultimately blasphemous.
I am reminded of an interview of the British comedian and actor Stephen Fry, who was asked that if it turned out that he was wrong, and there was a God to answer to, what would he say to Him?
He answered in such a wicked and blasphemous way, that I will not repeat much of what he said, but after wagging his finger in God’s face for so called “injustices,” he concludes by saying this:
“It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”
What a falsely proud thing to say? Why have you made me thus?
Yet, Stephen Fry doesn’t want for almost anything.
From the Psalmist’s perspective, isn’t Fry kind of right?
Life seems simpler and more worth living when your mind is clouded by sin and not taken by the holiness of God.
He focused on others response to the prosperity of the wicked. v. 10-11
10 Therefore his people return to this place, And waters of abundance are drunk by them.
11 They say, “How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High?”
Asaph was a leader of music in the Temple.
He had people under his care and management.
There were probably instances when those people would turn away and also be confused when the wicked prospered.
There were requirements to be kept as to the lifestyle of those who would participate in worship at the Temple.
He would have all these questions asked of him.
This brought tension to him.
Look at his response in verses 12-15.
12 Behold, these are the wicked; And always at ease, they have increased in wealth.
13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence;
14 For I have been stricken all day long And chastened every morning.
15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,” Behold, I would have betrayed the generation of Your children.
The ultimate sense of despair is felt in these verses.
He feels that he is wasting his time keeping the law and his life pure.
He feels that his reward for all his hard work is pain and rebuke.
His doubts as to if this life of holiness was worth it began to eat at him.
And he felt that he had nowhere to go and no one to tell.
Finally, when he came to the end of his ropes, he went searching for answers to his questions in the Temple and he found them! v. 16-17
16 When I pondered to understand this, It was troublesome in my sight
17 Until I came into the sanctuary of God; Then I perceived their end.
We keep a spiritual perspective on success, first by not becoming frustrated with the success of the foolish and the wicked.
By not forgetting what your end would be without Christ. v. 18-22
By not forgetting what your end would be without Christ. v. 18-22
18 Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction.
19 How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors!
20 Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.
21 When my heart was embittered And I was pierced within,
22 Then I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a beast before You
This riddle he was looking to solve became answered when he went before God in the temple.
As he was worshipping he was placed in front of eternal things.
And then he understood that the wicked do not truly prosper, but are worse off than the poorest man or woman with Christ.
The speed at which this life is lived, and the relative briefness of life against the backdrop of eternity make for a giant gap in the thinking of sinful man.
To live for the pleasures of this life, while ignoring the pleasure of the forever life to come is truly foolish.
The end of the one who lives this life without Christ is...
...past suddenly. v. 18-19
18 Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction.
19 How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors!
We are reminded several times in our lives that this life is frail.
How many times at Wednesday night prayer meetings do we get requests for family or acquaintances who have come into sudden illness or even death.
We live our lives forgetting how fast it can end.
We are programmed to go on and not consider the truth that death comes upon us all.
The puritans had a practice of having there funerals at the home of the deceased, and encouraged the children to look at and feel the dead body.
They wanted the reality of the shortness of life to be understood.
But today, we act like death never happens.
We have memorial services instead of funerals, and we celebrate life and have homecoming parties so that no one feels bad.
But the problem with this is we become numb to the fact that death is bad!
We forget that this is not how it is supposed to be.
And the unbeliever does this in order to dull the sting of death, but the truth remains it is appointed to every man to die and after this the judgement!
...forgotten quickly. v.20
20 Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.
There prosperous lives, their fame and fortune, their power and ideologies, all gone in a few short years after their deaths.
With very few exceptions, the politicians who sold their souls for political clout, the wealthiest businessmen of the past who trampled on others for their fortunes, the evil dictators of the past, are all lost to history or vaguely remembered in few minds.
They are like dreams, so vivid when you are having them, but so quickly forgotten when you awake!
But the Psalmist was wizened in this... though all of time and history forgets, God will never forget.
In 20 years the world will forget Stephen Fry, and some of you who do not watch British television may not even know who he is now, but God will remember his words and blasphemy and he will give an account to his maker!
Asaph considers his thoughts and is convicted at how stupid he was to be envious of those whose destruction was to be so soon upon them!
And what a perfect illustration he gives of this thinking.
The animal as no thoughts for the future.
It only thinks of filling its belly and reproducing itself.
But when Asaph confronted an eternal perspective the truth became clear.
He remembered where he would be without the truth.
By understanding who keeps you. V. 23-28
By understanding who keeps you. V. 23-28
23 Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand.
24 With Your counsel You will guide me, And afterward receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
27 For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
28 But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.
So many times we are tempted to get our eyes off of our savior when we are disappointed with the way things turn out in our lives.
We are often so short-sighted in our sinful flesh, that we fall into the same trap that our writer had fallen into.
But the biggest blessing is the God-given, gracious capacity that we have to widen our gaze when we are prone to fall short and look to this life instead of to our savior.
God has equipped us with several gifts to get us through these times.
He holds onto to us. v. 23
23 Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand.
This is a most uplifting verse!
Even through these tough times of doubt and searching, God was continually with him!
I was a brute in my understanding, nevertheless you held my hand through it all!
So many times we miss the opportunity to see growth in our Christian lives by going through times of great doubt without seeing it through to the end of faith.
God’s shoulders are big enough to carry you through the doubt!
Romans Chapter 5 shows us the pattern of sanctification:
1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.
3 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
4 and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope;
5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
God uses this to grow us, He never let’s go, but walks through the valleys of doubt onto the mountains of glory and faith with us.
Matthew Henry says this:
"My feet were almost gone, and they would have quite gone, past recovery, but that thou hast holden me by my right hand and so kept me from falling.'
He guides us with His counsel. v. 24a
24 With Your counsel You will guide me…
What a glorious promise.
The psalmist sinks so low in his doubts and insecurities, but it is when he seeks the Lord that he finds wisdom that brings him to higher understanding of the Truth.
James 1:5 says:
5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
He gives the Hope of Glory. v. 24b
24 …And afterward receive me to glory.
This is why we should never envy the Christ-less.
Our end is to be eternal glory with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We are His bride, His people, His beloved. We will see Him and be like He is.
There is no greater wealth to be achieved. No greater goal to be had.
No fame, fortune, power, or earthy peace that can be taken by force is worth having over Christ in you, the hope of glory!
Again Matthew Henry distills it for us:
Upon this consideration, let us never envy sinners, but rather bless ourselves in our own blessedness. If God direct us in the way of our duty, and prevent our turning aside out of it, he will afterwards, when our state of trial and preparation is over, receive us to his kingdom and glory, the believing hopes and prospects of which will reconcile us to all the dark providences that now puzzle and perplex us, and ease us of the pain we have been put into by some threatening temptations.
What precious gifts given to us by our marvelous savior!
Oh wicked flesh!
To trust in ability over grace!
To trust in wealth over mercy!
To trust in man over God!
To trust in health over eternity!
To trust in work over providence!
To trust in self over God’s truth!
What do we have or what can we gain that is greater than Christ?
He teaches us not to trust in anything but Him.
In the hardest times of doubt and despair, when everything fails us, we can rest in Him.
I tried to find some quote or illustration to explain this passage. But I couldn’t find anything that really says it any better!
25 Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Trust in me, and I will fail you!
Even in simple matters. No matter how sincere I am and how much I want to succeed in coming through for you.
I have already had to apologize to many of you. Said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
I let my family down, I let myself down.
But God will never fail, He will never let you down.
Make Him the strength of your heart and your portion and He will not disappoint!
Conclusion
Conclusion
How close are you to God?
Notice the Psalmist uses distance to differentiate between those that perish and those whom God protects.
27 For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
28 But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.
Those who are far perish, but those that are near find refuge.
And beloved, you will no doubt find yourself failing at placing your trust completely in Christ.
You will find yourself looking at your life with a fleshly perspective.
But in those times, remember, He holds your hand and He never lets us go.
Run to the Christ who took down the barriers between us and Holy God so that we could be near to Him and we could find our refuge in Him alone.
So that you can say with Asaph, Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
