God My Portion Forever

Psalm 73 God My Portion Forever Introduction: Psalms 50 and 73 - 83 have above them the subscription - a Psalm of Asaph. Asaph was a Levite who David appointed as the chief over the music in YHWH's house. He was a prophet, a gifted musician and a poet. And if you look at the Psalms he wrote you’ll notice that he had a heart, a real soft spot for Social and Divine Justice. So much so, that he continually had to keep a watch over his own heart and mouth… It was a constant struggle for him.. This Psalm is all about Justice. Psalm 73 captures that age old question, “If God is good, then why evil?” or put another way, “Why do the righteous suffer?”, "Why do bad things happen to good people… or again, "why don’t bad things only happen to “bad” people?” These are upsetting questions to wrestle with. These are real life questions. Something remarkably refreshing about the Psalms is there honesty. On the one hand, the Psalms actually show you that you can be unhappy in God’s presence. You can be angry at God. The Psalms, in a sense, give you the permission to pour out your complaints in a way that we might think inappropriate, if it wasn’t there in the Scriptures. But on the other hand, the Psalms demand that you bow in the end to the sovereignty of God in a way that modern culture wouldn’t lead you to believe. Asaph is totally raw in his honesty about how he feels - He’s angry at God. 1. Angry Like Asaph? 1. Did you know that there are many people who are mad at God? Not just non-christians, but christians too. Maybe even some of you. Some people don’t even realize they are mad at God, but they are. They are mad at the way their life is going, and mad at the way God is running the world…. (God isn’t speaking to me like he used to, God isn’t answering my prayers, I don’t feel close to him..this person was healed of their cancer and this person wasn’t, it doesn’t seem right, it doesn’t seem fair). 2. This problem is inevitable for Christians. The more you practice righteous living, the more you practice gospel centered generosity the more you practice compassion, the more you will be prone to be mad, upset, shocked and appalled at the evil of the World.. and that often leads to a crisis of faith. But a crisis of faith is not necessarily a bad thing. A crisis in faith comes because things aren’t fitting into “our” categories…things aren’t happening they way we think they should. Crises can be prophetic whispers to us, that wake us up and bring us back to reality.. 2. Asaph’s Crisis 1. That’s what is going on with Asaph. He knows God is good. But when he looked around him, when he looked at the day to day reality of things, it shocked him, it sent him into a faith crisis. He says, “But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.” “ 2. “Footing” is a metaphor for your basis for life, what you are all about, The foundation on which you have built your identity and purpose. Asaph is a Jew who believes in God, who obeys God, and he takes all this very seriously. He has been working very hard, vs 13 and 14 tells us, to keep his hands clean and his heart pure (he’s been moral, he’s living a decent life, he’s living a religious life) and all he’s gotten in return is affliction. Asaph doesn’t say what his affliction is. It could be mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical - personal sickness, death in the family, economic crisis, it could be anything. He doesn’t say what it is, and we should be glad for that because we can insert our own pain, our woe, our disappointment in that place. But whatever it is it almost caused him to lose his faith, to pack it in, to live for something else… 1. What was Asaph’s Crisis? - “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” 2. Why am I killing myself to be good? All of my goodness, all of my keeping myself clean is pointless.. All I get is pain, guilt, and rebuke…what in the world am I doing to myself??? He’s righteous and afflicted, totally miserable, and the wicked are happy and seemingly blessed. Why do the wicked prosper? Look, they’re healthy, wealthy, at ease, they take advantage of everything and everyone, they are totally selfish, and everything always goes right for them…Why aren’t their lives miserable? It seems that the wicked win, and prosper, that they are comfortable, and that the righteous will continually suffer. Not only do they get away with godlessness . . . they seem to be flourishing! 3. Asaph sees this and it almost causes him to lose faith, to lose his basis for living, to give up. He says, (vs.16) the more he thought about it the more confused and frustrated he became. And in vs. 21 he confesses that he is embittered and angry with God. And if you’ve never felt like Asaph it’s probably because you either are in the category of people he’s describing or you aren’t trying to live a godly life, or at least you really aren’t trying that hard. 3. How did he get back his Footing? 1. Asaph did four things to regain his footing. 1. He grabs hold of a negative - “If I spoke this way (aloud, openly) I would have offended your children….” I guess if you are falling off a cliff you’ll grab hold of anything.. 2. He went into the sanctuary - Why the sanctuary? What was it there that opened his eyes? The sanctuary of God is where the altar was. It was there that the sins of the people were covered, and atoned for. The place where God’s covenant with Israel was enacted everyday through the blood of a spotless lamb. He was reminded of God's covenant faithful love. We - through the cross are reminded of our God who suffered the greatest injustice that he might eternally be with us and we with him - that we might have him. If you are angry with God about injustice you need to go to the ultimate altar, you need to look at the cross of Jesus Christ where the only truly innocent person, the only person with clean hands an a pure heart, experienced true injustice - “where God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” God did this so that when he brings justice on the earth and wipes out all sin he won’t have to wipe us out with it. 3. He discerned (saw) their end - He got hold of the big picture..he sees or discerns the situation more clearly, and also sees himself more clearly. The first thing Asaph came to understand was that he was not seeing the whole picture. If you find yourself in Crisis like Asaph, when you find yourself angry at God, and at your situation, remember this, you are too close to the situation. you need to get the full picture in view. Tim Keller gave a helpful illustration. “Truth is not a square, it’s a cube.” He points out that a square and a cube are not the same thing. You can see the whole square from one vantage point but to see a cube you need to view it from several sides. We have a tendency to look at life as if it were a square when in reality it is more like a cube. 1. Think about someone who is looking to buy a house. You know that you can’t learn everything you need to know about a house from looking only at the front. You need to walk around the house and see it from all sides. You can’t tell how deep it is or what is in the back of the house until you walk around it. This is also true of truth. The reason we get confused, the reason we fall into heresy or false thinking, confusion, the reason we become disillusioned is because we are trying to make things too simple! We are looking at truth two dimensionally rather than three dimensionally. When we look at three dimensional life from a two dimensional perspective our conclusions are often erroneous. 1. This goes back to our study in Psalm 107 on the complexity of God. He is a just Judge, He’s the mighty King and yet he is also a gracious Father, and a Counseling friend. You must live in the tension 2. If God is God you can be perplexed by him, but don’t be perplexed at your perplexity..he’s God..But you are only thinking of one of his attributes - you are looking at God like he’s a square not a cube- Of course you don’t understand why he does what he does.. To say that God is unjust in not repaying people when and how you think he should is to say that you have a greater standard of justice than God… You’re basically saying, God, you don’t know what you are doing.. 2. Once Asaph sees the big picture he realizes two things: that his heart toward the wicked should be pity and not envy. He sees himself - he’s acted like an animal.. 1. He says, “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.” 1. What a haunting terrible picture: their doom is imminent, their whole foundation or basis for living is a slippery slope to fall to ruin and they are remembered no more..they are phantoms, they come nothing… 2. R.C. Sproul says: for the believer, there is no such thing as tragedy because in every situation God is working for our good. He is teaching us, drawing us close, deepening our faith, and giving us hope. Even death is not a tragedy to a believer because it is the doorway to Heaven, the highest, deepest, and most lasting blessing there is. On the other hand, for the unbeliever, everything is tragedy. All those things we “envy” about their lives is actually making them feel more and more that they don’t need God and those “blessings” are effectively moving them further from God and closer to their own eternal destruction. There is no greater tragedy.” Anything you put your feet on other than God is the real slippery ground. It will vanish, it will fail, and you will fall. 2. He sees that he has been a beast - we act like beast before God when we complain at him like this, when we challenge his goodness and justice. You know what this is like? Have you ever had a pet that you had to groom or give medicine to, now the animal doesn’t know what is happening or what you are doing, but you do, you are of higher intellect and capability than your animal, the animal doesn't understand what the master is doing (all the animal knows is that it wants to kill you, because it thinks you’re trying to kill it)…How much of a higher being is the LORD who created you, who created and sustains all things, the Sovereign judge of all the earth and here we are griping before him…we’re like stupid animals, we don’t know what the Shepherd is doing, we don’t see the whole picture. (Like with Job - where were you when I laid the foundations?) 4. He asks the Ultimate Question 1. Once Asaph comes to his senses he is utterly embarrassed, ashamed, that he treated God with such contempt..And now at the climax of this poem Asaph celebrates all that he has in God 2. “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. 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength[b] of my heart and my portion forever.” 1. In all of Asaph’s anger, his frustration, his thoughts and temptations to betray his God and all that he lived for, all that he believed in..God was holding him, and with him the whole time..and God will continue to be with him, throughout his life, guiding him with his loving, wise counsel, there at death, receiving him into glory…. God is my strength and my portion forever. Asaph realizes that he was really angry at God because he thought God was keeping him back from blessing, withholding from him… Which shows that Asaph was seeking and serving God not to be with God, not for God’s sake, but for prosperity, for blessing.. 2. Why am I mad at God?” The answer always is, “Because I want something more than I want God.” Let me put it again. Why are you mad at God? Always “Because there’s something you want more than God.” Think about that. Think about the ramifications of that. Think of the logic of that. Think of the stupidity of that. That’s what happens to Asaph. He suddenly gets it. Imagine being in a situation where you were dating somebody and you seemed to be falling in love. As part of getting to know one another, you let it be known that when you got married you were coming into a significant trust fund. The person who you’re falling in love with said, “Oh, really? Well, it doesn’t make any difference to me whether you’re rich or poor. I love you for who you are.” Suppose, just before the wedding you learned that you weren’t going to get that trust fund? When you relayed that to your spouse-to-be, he or she got so disappointed that they called off the wedding. How would you feel? What would that tell you about this person’s love for you? What would you say? You know what you would say. You would be utterly devastated. You would start to say, “You never loved me for me. You were using me. You loved me because I was going to get you somewhere or get you something. You didn’t love me. You were using me.” - Keller 3. Asaph understood that he was guilty of doing the same thing in His relationship with God. Asaph realized that instead of loving the Lord for who He is, He loved what He believed the Lord would give him. When he felt he wasn’t getting his “trust fund” he was ready to walk away. Sometimes the trials of life reveal the true nature of our faith. Sometimes we see that we are not serving God, we are using Him! Conclusion: My portion (inheritance) is the LORD. The difference is infinite. You set them in slippery places - (remember the footing) contrast Nevertheless, I am always with you; you hold my right hand.. Would you rather have a bottle of water or a living spring? God is the source of all. He who has the Lord has everything… “If a man has Christ, he has everything. If I want perfection, and I have Christ, I have absolute perfection in him. If I want righteousness, I shall find in him my beauty and my glorious dress. I want pardon, and if I have Christ, I am pardoned. I want heaven, and if I have Christ, I have the Prince of heaven, and shall be there by-and-bye, to live with Christ, and to dwell in his blessed embrace for ever. If you have Christ, you have all….If a man has Christ, he has all for eternity; and if he has not Christ, he is poor, and blind, and naked, and will be miserable for ever.” -Spurgeon