Defeating Discontentment

Introduction

Good morning! Please turn in your copy of God’s Word to Psalm 73 this morning. Psalm 73. We are continuing our present study of the Psalms, one by one, book by book, so this morning we are looking at the first psalm in Book Three, having covered Psalms 1, 42 and 43 already. We will read through this psalm together, then we will pray, then we will meditate upon this text from God’s own hand together. Hear now, the Word of God for us this morning.

This is the Word of the Lord: Thanks be to God! Let us pray:

Our Father in Heaven, we are here this morning to adore You, to confess our sins and thanksgiving before You, and finally to present our requests before you. We ask that you would bless us in the hearing and singing and reading of Your Word right here this morning. We ask that you look with kindness upon your servants, as we suffer physical ailments, some of us are currently in the hospital as our bodies fight against the fallen world. We suffer social ailments, abiding the derision of the world as we seek to obey You before we obey the commands of men. We patiently seek you while the world panics and points at us as houses of hatred. O God, righteous Judge, judge rightly this morning!

Let us be found content, blameless according to Your righteous Law because we are united to the Righteous Man. We ask that you be with our brothers and sisters around the world: Martín, suffering for your name’s sake in Nicaragua, and Brad and Madelyn, working for your Kingdom’s Cause in Central Asia.

Finally, we ask that you deal graciously with us this morning, washed by the Blood of the Lamb. Strengthen our bodies and our minds as we think together deeply about Your everlasting Word. Shape and fashion us into the likeness of the Son, Your Eternal Word, through this text this morning. Fill my voice by Your Spirit, and fall afresh on us this morning, that we might see our Savior in the preaching of the Word and the presentation of the Ordinance today. Amen.

We are continuing our study of the Psalms, slowly but surely, by looking now to Psalm 73. I was ready for Psalm 73, having previously addressed psalm 42-43 together. I was ready for an encouraging, happy psalm that would really make me feel good. So imaging my rejoicing when I started reading and found great worship lyrics like, “Their eyes swell out through fatness,” and, “All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.” I imagine you may have a similar response. It’s a little unfair; we just used this Psalm for our call to worship last week. How many of you felt really worshipful last Sunday after reading this together? Don’t raise your hands.

You may or may not be surprised to hear that I have found this Psalm to be a great comfort for myself, and indeed, it stirs me to worship. I hope, after meditating together upon this Psalm, it will stir you to worship as well. This psalm has served the Church very well in dealing with various discontentments in this life, to show us a way of deliverance from that particular temptation. This morning, we will see that when God draws us near, He delivers us from despair. When God draws us near, He delivers us from despair.

We will take two headings from the Psalm, looking first at verses 1-15 to see Asaph’s Despair, then turning to verses 16-28 to see Asaph’s Deliverance. Obviously, I’m using Asaph as a pointer. He was the chief musician for David, which means that they wrote songs on one another’s behalf. So we can read Psalm 73 as the voice of David, the great Prophet King, and we can also read the psalm in our own voice, giving expression to our own Christian experience in the same sin-stained world in which he found himself.

Asaph’s Despair

Imagine, if you will, that you are around 10 years old. You and your younger sibling by three or four years are playing in your grandparents’ basement, chasing one another for control of a McDonald’s toy. Something silly, it’s not valuable, it’s just a trinket. You don’t even really want it, you just wanted to take it from your sibling. In your chasing and running and yelling and taunting, you narrowly escape your sibling lunge at you with all their might. They go flying into the basement couch, and you go flying into your grandmother’s prized lamp. The lamp goes crashing to the floor, and you go crashing up the stairs to report what happened to your grandmother.

“Grandma! Timmy was trying to take my toy and he broke your lamp because I wouldn’t give it to him!” Grandma believes you, and is understandably cross with Timmy. She sends him outside to pull weeds from her flowerbed for the rest of the day and takes away the quarter she had given him as a gift earlier. How do you feel? Proud of your deception? Happy to escape Grandma’s judgement?

Now, imagine that you’re Timmy, and your older sister has taken your toy, broken Grandma’s lamp and blamed it all on you. None of your protests have been heard, and you’ve been sentenced to pull weeds. While you’re outside, you see Grandma reaching into the freezer to give your older sister her homemade ice cream with the fresh apple pie coming out of the oven. Now, how do you feel?

Last one, let’s raise the stakes a bit. I’m borrowing this from Richard Phillips. Imagine now that you’re walking down the street, in the city, on a rainy evening. You’re stopped, beaten, robbed and violated on the street by a thug. When you finally gain the confidence to report and press charges, your attacker gets off scot-free on a technicality. Wallowing in your shame and self-pity, you see his face on the front cover of a new best-selling book on how to get away with whatever you want. How are you feeling now? If you’re anything like me, you may have felt quite proud of yourself at the outset, for getting away with breaking the lamp, but as we went along, you become increasingly discontent with your lot in life.

It sometimes feels like the world is against us, and that all the wrong people get all the right things. We expect hard work to pay off, and for the good deeds to be rewarded, yet we see cheaters and swindlers climb the social ladder by crime and deception and get away with it! We know from Philippians 4 that Paul was able to say that he could abound whether he had much or little, able to do all things through Him who strengthens. But how do we get there? How do we get from the sense of injustice and unfairness and discontentment to rejoicing in God’s care and providence?

Psalm 73 gives us a bit of a roadmap, if you will, to deliver us from despair and discontentment. Keep hold of your reactions to the situations I’ve laid out for you, remember them as we look together at this text and worship God together.

Asaph begins this psalm with proclamation of confidence in God. He says, “Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart,” or, “Only God is good to Israel.” He starts with this confession of his own faith in God to bless his people. Notice, though, that he clarifies who he’s talking about here in verse 1. He isn’t suddenly addressing a different group of people by the phrase, “those who are pure in heart,” as if Israel is one group of people God blesses and the pure in heart is another. No, he clarifies that his confidence is in God’s blessing the True Israel of God, those with “hearts sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience” by the blood of Christ.

Already, Asaph is starting from a place of wisdom. He’s saying, “I know the visible church may or may not receive full and final blessing from the Lord, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, truly, God will bless the invisible church.” The True Believers among the covenant people of God. It is with this in mind that his descent into despair is all the more distressing.

“But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Asaph steps back. He’s like a child, standing outside and looking at his sibling getting ice cream and longing for some of that fresh apple pie. He has this sense of being caught between the blessings of God for his people and the prosperity and riches of the worldly wicked. Have you ever felt this frustration? You work every day as for the Lord and not for men, quietly going above and beyond what was asked when a co-worker who is usually late for work suddenly becomes best friends with a supervisor and lands himself a promotion! Why can’t I get a promotion? Shouldn’t I be able to progress in my career because I work harder than anyone else?

Asaph is in the exact same place. He sees that they live in comfort, they get fat from having plenty to eat, they have all the blessings in the world, yet their lives are lived in open rebellion to God! Not only are they not cut down where they stand for their insolence, “they are not even in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.” In other words, their arrogance and wickedness seems to do them well!

Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his treatise The Prince in 1513, openly instructing his readers to be cunning and crafty, selectively moral in order to gain the upper hand politically. It seems like Asaph is seeing Machiavelli’s inspiration at work. We see modern politicians living their lives this way, one public life of moral posturing and virtue signaling while acting morally bankrupt behind closed doors (on both sides of our modern political divide, btw). In light of this apparent prosperity, Asaph records that he is envious of them.

They don’t suffer in this life! They don’t fight against the desires of their flesh! Yet, in everything, they mock the people of God both in their words and in their walk. Look with me at verse 9. “They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.” It’s as if Asaph is asking himself, “How did they get so much gain?” And his answer is this: by bullying, by scoffing at God and His commandments, by puffing themselves up with pride. For all their boasting and bullying, though, it looks like the wicked have gained a good reward. This is to the degree that even God’s visible people are deceived!

Verse 10 says that even God’s people turn back to them and cannot find fault. This verse is a little tricky to interpret. The original Hebrew says something along the lines of “God’s people are filled by their fullness.” In other words, even God’s people are drinking up all the bragging of the wicked. Asaph himself is close to stumbling. Wouldn’t it be better to deceive Grandma next time? I’ll blame everything on my older sister and then I’ll get my ice cream and apple pie! Where’s my reward? I’ll show my boss who really works hard so I can get my raise!

But watch, it goes further than this. When God’s people start drinking up the envy of the wicked, they don’t just say something about wickedness. It’s as if they speak against God directly, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” Brothers and sisters, listen! When we fall into the depths of this kind of despair and temptation, thinking the grass is greener on the other side of righteousness, we trade in God Himself for a McDonald’s toy. God is omniscient. It’s not just that He possesses great knowledge. No, He is Himself All Knowing. To question God’s knowledge in this way is to insult God’s very nature.

“Behold, these are the wicked!” They enjoy these things all their lives long, 50, 60 years of lying and cheating and enjoying money and sex and vacations and cars and everything we could possibly want in this world. Asaph himself says in his heart, “All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.” This prophet of God, basically saying, obedience to God is useless. Being cleansed by Christ’s blood just doesn’t do anything for me. Not only is there no clear benefit to following God, it seems like following God will lead you into more suffering!

Do you see yourself here? Doesn’t Asaph sound just like us? My own temptation is to look at those big, multi-site churches with doctrine shallower than a kiddie pool with money oozing out of their ears and to wonder, “If I water down the message of God, maybe I could do better for myself…” Maybe we see our friends at these larger churches, going on nicer trips or enjoying paid musicians playing the latest Christian radio fluff, and we long for the comfort of a church like that. Brothers and sisters, do not be deceived. Not only is no church perfect, but God has specifically placed you where you are so you might make an impact where you are. God will judge every church against the same rubric of His Word. The lights won’t matter. The music style won’t matter. The number of people who attend won’t matter. The size of the church budget won’t matter. Our measure, together, is faithfulness to God’s Word.

III.Asaph’s Deliverance

Now we reach verse 15, and we introduce the second half of our psalm this morning: Asaph’s Deliverance. Asaph’s discontentment has been seen. We’ve seen ourselves in Asaph’s foolish envy of the wicked and arrogant. Lord willing, we will now find ourselves in Asaph’s deliverance from this temptation.

Asaph has the sense not to speak these things out loud. He proudly proclaims his confidence in the Lord in verse 1, but he dare not betray God’s people by his doubtfulness. Brothers and sisters, think to yourself. Reflect now upon God’s Word. Think deeply about your own heart this morning. Has your discontentment with insignificant things in your life at work, at church, at home overflowed into your speech? Realize that your complaint isn’t ultimately against your boss or your coworkers or your kids or you pastor. It’s ultimately against God.

Asaph kept his mouth shut. All his disillusionment and discontentment spoiled only himself.

Verse 16, “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task.” Asaph doesn’t cloister himself in his bitterness. He doesn’t shut himself away to be angry with the world and angry with God. He seeks to understand these things by entering into the sanctuary of God. He goes to Church on Sunday with all the saints, and he gets his clarity.

So often, when things go wrong or things get bad, we are tempted to shut ourselves off from those people who care for us the most! But please listen to me: the sanctuary of God is the last place you should skip.

When he draws near to God, worshipping alongside his brothers and sisters, he loses sight of his sorrows and suffering and affliction. Not because they go away, but because he gets a vision of glory in the house of the Lord. He is caught up, enraptured by the beauty and wisdom of God Himself, then he discerns the end of the wicked.

All the stuff, all the trips, all the money, all the fame and reputation earned by lying and cheating and boasting and bullying is the full reward of the wicked. That half-satisfaction in many possessions is all the grace of God that they’ll ever get apart from Christ.

In a moment, they slip into their own ruin, unable to take any of their stuff with them to destruction. Asaph likens their judgement to a dream that you can barely remember when you wake up.

It’s not that Asaph can suddenly see things as God sees them. That’s impossible for creatures like us. No, but Asaph sees God. He sees God. “Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.” The next few verses are almost ruined by commentary.

Remember that feeling of injustice and anger and bitterness from our stories at the beginning? This is our answer:

English Standard Version Psalm 73

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.

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 of my heart and my portion forever.

We’ve recounted together not just Asaph’s despair and deliverance, but our own as well. God has given us everything we need! As a Church, as Christians! He gives guidance to endure the light momentary afflictions of this life, and afterward He will receive his children to glory.

We’ve recounted the failures of our own hearts and our own flesh as we reflect on our discontentment, but rejoice, O Daughter of Zion! God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever!

See the end of the wicked: “Those who are far from you shall perish”

And see the end of those whose hearts are pure: “I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.”

IV.Conclusion

I’ll close this morning with a few brief thoughts before we take the Lord’s Supper together. Jesus teaches us in Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

There is infinite reward for the Israel of God. I encourage you this morning, turn once again to your Savior. He alone is good to Israel. He alone can sprinkle your hearts clean to enter into the presence of God.

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face

and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”