Reading: Psalm 73
Today I want to inspire you with a fresh vision of the Sovereignty of God & the grace of God, especially in face of events in our lives that sometimes seem unfair
Let’s start right at the very beginning of the psalm with its heading.
Author = Asaph, the leader of one of David’s choirs,
- the choir consisted of Levite priests whose ministry was to write and perform deeply moving and gloriously inspiring music for God’s people – especially when they met together for worship.
Look at Asaph’s psalms and we quickly see some common themes – two of them in particular
- the sovereignty of God – His overarching rule and reign in the world and in our lives.
- the grace of God – His unlimited generosity and compassion that means he doesn’t give us what we deserve
The trouble is, it doesn’t always appear that God is on the throne – that’s where Asaph starts
Lord, I don’t get it!
1. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. BUT … as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.
He’d nearly lost his faith and all but abandoned the truths he’d come to believe.
Why is that? Because there appears to be a worrying disconnect between the
truth that he believes and the
world he inhabits
- God is good – a global statement of ultimate truth that he knows it to be true – he feels he ought to be able to believe it but he just can’t! Why might that be?
Asaph is saying, just like we do, I believe that God is good, but I don’t see a good world around me – I just don’t get it
- I believe that God provides but I’m still struggling to make my pay-check stretch to the end of the month
- I believe that God loves me – but it would be nice to feel someone else to loved me too
- I believe that God gives peace – but he should just visit my family some day!
- I believe that God heals, but why do I have to rely on pain-killers? I’ve kept my body in good shape for all these years and
still got diabetes! Why, God? It’s not fair! And I don’t get it
And, as if to rub salt into my wounds, God, all around me there are people who are careless about you yet don’t have these hassles! I don’t get it!
So, like some of us, when he sees something wrong in life, he starts by looking inwards
Lord, maybe it’s my own fault
Maybe there is a heart-level malfunction that makes me feel this way
1. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
So, Asaph reasons, if God is good to the pure in heart, maybe it’s my heart that’s at fault! Maybe my spirit is ‘impure’ in some way!
So he starts on some introspection, and he thinks he finds something God would have cause to put his finger on. What’s the malfunction? He tells us in v3
3 … For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
So Asaph puts his hand up and admits …
Envy. Here’s something that is ungodly but hard to shake off.
- Asaph is saying “I try to keep my heart right with you, Lord, and I don’t see much prosperity for it, but these people are fit, well and prosperous – but they don’t care about you!
- And I envy them!
Prosperity in 21
st century west is seen mostly in terms of money. In Hebrew culture it was much wider than that
- It would include health, wealth, family and status.
Asaph describes the prosperity he envies:<ppt>
free from struggles
4 They have no struggles;
physically fit
4… their bodies are healthy and strong.
These people have a great biceps and a six-pack – which they don’t mind showing off to the world
Hebrew text hard to translate, but has the idea of ‘no pangs at their death’ – so even in their final days the wicked seem to have an easy time of it!
don’t have hassles
5. They are free from common human burdens;
there’s a special word used here ‘their bodes are sound’. In their day, they thought that certain ailments were likely to be visitations from God in judgement. But if you’re free of these your body was said to be ‘sound’ – and that’s the word that used here. These people are free of these judgement-inducing ailments.
Can you feel the mounting sense of unfairness Asaph is feeling? Why does God appear to advantage the wicked in their health?
don’t suffer illness
5 … they are not plagued by human ills.
These affluent atheists seem to be untouched by the troubles that God-honouring people experience.
And if that’s a spiritual analysis, there’s a spiritual consequence that Asaph spots – One attitude these prosperous, well equipped, well-heeled well-educated well-endowed people often display
v6 [as a consequence] pride is their necklace;
If you have a prestigious piece of jewellery, where might it be displayed – around your neck on a necklace. It will then be the first thing an onlooker will see about you.
- For these people Asaph is describing, pride is strung around their neck like a precious stone.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being fit, healthy and prosperous, but as soon as pride rears its head, a moral boundary has been crossed.
- And their pride led them to oppress the unwary and throw their weight around.
v6 they clothe themselves with violence.
7 From their callous hearts comes iniquity, their evil imaginations have no limits.
8 They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression.
9 Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.
Have crowds of followers
And their ideas and their claims all sound so plausible that people hang on their every word
10 Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.
They would boast tens of thousands of twitter followers and thousands of facebook friends.
Take Richard Dawkins for example, probably our best known atheistic philosopher.
- Thousands of people flock to his seminars and read his books
- they drink in the message – even though it’s fatally flawed
11 They say, [ and we can hear this in 2015] “How would God know? Does the Most High know anything?”
God is ignorant, they aregue – if he exists at all! So why should we bother with him?!
Asaph sees that their bodies are fit, their minds are secularised and their bank balances are bulging! So they don’t have a care in the world
12 This is what the wicked are like — always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.
So he asks a question that is as penetrating as it is obvious …
Lord, what’s the point?
I’ve done my best
13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence.
Lord, I’ve really tried to live for you – I’ve sacrificed for you, I’ve worshipped you – I’ve done my level best to steer clear of wrong-doing in any form.
Yet it’s almost as if you, yourself are afflicting me!
14 All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments.
Let me ask, in moment’s you’ve felt like that, who do you tell?
- If your faith is slipping and doubts rise up because you can’t make sense of the world as you see it, who do you go to.
- It would be nice to think that we’ve each got a trusted friend we can confide in, but I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us would do what Asaph did – tell no-one.
I dare not say this in public
15 If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children.
How could he, a worship leader and composer, admit to doubts of this magnitude?
So here’s another tension for Asaph.
- He’s the choir leader, a man of artistic skill and personal influence
- BUT if he spills out all these doubts, they’ll undermine the faith of God’s people
16 so I kept wondering about all this, and it troubled me deeply
Can I encourage you to pray for people in positions of public influence and Christian teachers who need to be confident and secure – when they have doubts, where do they go with them?
Probably one of the most telling examples is Mother Teresa. Ten years after her death, he personal papers were published that revealed a lady wrestling with doubts about her faith and the way God was operating in the world she was part of.
- And yet she kept those doubts to herself for the sake of her followers.
But Asaph finds only one place where his doubts can be addressed. It’s not by having them answered, but by looking at the world differently.
New worldview
A turning point is reached here. “I felt in tension like this …
17 until I entered the sanctuary of God;
Actually ‘sanctuary’ is a plural word “sanctuaries” so it might be more than one building, or a word expressing the places where I meet with God, where I encounter him.
- Going to God’s special places got him thinking differently
Like lens – you see the world differently depending on the lens you use >>>
17 … then I understood their final destiny.
So what did he understand? What reality did he discover?
The reality – God is sovereign
So what was it about the godless, but prosperous that Asaph saw? What was the ultimate reality that he realised through God’s lens?
18 Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin.
When I let myself envy them I felt as if I was on a slippery slope! But when I saw it from your angle Lord, I realised that they were the ones on the slide!
The reality – materialism is a fantasy
And it takes almost nothing to make their prosperity evaporate
19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors!
20 They are like a dream when one awakes; when you rise up, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.
The prosperity of the godless is like a nightmare – a dream that seems real and scary at the time, but in reality is just a figment of the mind.
It’s no more solid than a brain-wave or a bad dream.
The reality – my insight was inadequate
What was all that about?
Have you ever had one of those experiences that mystifies you and you look back and you think “What was all that about?!” You try to make sense of it
- That’s what Asaph does next; he reflects on the work of his heart to get a handle on what God’s saying to him.
21 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, [about this bothersome question ‘ why do the godless prosper]
22 [in those moments] I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a brute beast before you.
Instead of loving you, worshipping you, being in awe of you I was like an angry bear with a very small brain!
So what can I see through my new lens of your grace?
23 Yet I am always with you;
The reality – God never leaves me!
23 … you hold me by my right hand. [for today]
24 You guide me with your counsel, [for tomorrrow]
and afterward you will take me into glory. [for the future]
25 So whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
God makes me strong
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
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