Sermon on Psalm 73

In the late 1500’s, a Spanish Carmelite monk by the name of John of the Cross, wrote a poem that has come to be called “The Dark Night.”  In this poem he described the manner in which the soul “departs, as to its affection, from itself and from all things, dying through a true mortification to all of them and to itself, to arrive at a sweet and delicious life with God.”  The first stanza of the poem says,

In an obscure night
Fevered with love’s anxiety
(O hapless, happy plight!)
I went, none seeing me
Forth from my house, where all things quiet be

John also wrote a commentary on his poem in two separate books, Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night.  He described the spiritual crises that must occur in our journey toward true devotion to Christ.  He describes how some face these critical moments and grow, while others give up the faith.

John’s is not the first such chronicle of the dangers that face us with regard to faith.  Psalm 73 in our Scriptures greatly precedes John’s work, written around a thousand years before Christ by a man of great spiritual prowess, Asaph.  Asaph was a Levite selected by king David to lead worship at the Tabernacle.  He was a poet and a prophet, we are told in Scripture, and in Psalm 73 he describes a spiritual crisis he went through in which he nearly lost his faith.

No doubt Asaph wrote Psalm 73 in order to instruct us, because we too go through crises of faith.  We go through dark nights in which our journey to true devotion to Christ faces a test that challenges our faith in Christ to the core.  And Asaph wants to show us how to successfully navigate through this dark night.  Would you like to look at it with me?

Asaph’s Credo

Asaph begins Psalm 73 with his credo, his basic statement of faith, what he believes and what guides his life.  He says,

¹ God is indeed good to Israel,
to the pure in heart.

Could this be your credo?  God is good to those who believe in Him, to those who are pure in heart.  In other words, God will be good to those who sincerely live and act in the purity God teaches us to have.  Purity in heart is genuine love for and faith in Christ.

This is what Asaph believed but his belief came under severe attack when he saw two things.

Asaph’s Startling Discovery About the Wicked and Himself

The first thing Asaph saw, that disturbed him to the core of his soul, was that the wicked were prospering.

² But as for me, my feet almost slipped;
my steps nearly went astray.

You have surely had the experience of slipping, haven’t you?  You’re going along safe and secure, when all of a sudden, your feet go out from under you, and you end up flat on your back.  I could tell you an embarrassing story about a slip I had in the shower.  It is terrifying, isn’t it?  And I’m sure you have also had the experience of almost slipping, where the terror is prolonged as you struggle to keep your balance and not go down.  That is what happened to Asaph.  And here is what made him almost slip in his faith.

³ For I envied the arrogant;
I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

⁴ They have an easy time until they die,
and their bodies are well fed.
⁵ They are not in trouble like others;
they are not afflicted like most people.
⁶ Therefore, pride is their necklace,
and violence covers them like a garment.
⁷ Their eyes bulge out from fatness;
the imaginations of their hearts run wild.
⁸ They mock, and they speak maliciously;
they arrogantly threaten oppression.
⁹ They set their mouths against heaven,
and their tongues strut across the earth.
¹⁰ Therefore his people turn to them
and drink in their overflowing words.
¹¹ The wicked say, “How can God know?
Does the Most High know everything?”
¹² Look at them—the wicked!
They are always at ease,
and they increase their wealth.

In Asaph’s understanding, this doesn’t fit the credo.  Because the corollary of his belief, that God is good to the pure in heart, is that God is not good to the wicked in heart.  And for Asaph that means the wicked, those who arrogantly mock belief in God and the need to obey Him, should be experiencing the judgment of God on their lives.  They shouldn’t be healthy, wealthy, or wise.  But that is not what Asaph saw.  He saw wicked people going to their graves in absolute prosperity.

But that was just the first thing that brought his faith under attack.  Perhaps if the wicked getting off scot-free was the only problem, he would have been okay.  But look at what else he also experienced:

¹³ Did I purify my heart
and wash my hands in innocence for nothing?
¹⁴ For I am afflicted all day long
and punished every morning.
¹⁵ If I had decided to say these things aloud,
I would have betrayed your people.

Not only were the wicked prospering, which seemed like a contradiction to God’s justice, but he, one who was pure in heart, was suffering and not prospering.  He doesn’t tell us what the nature of that suffering was.  It doesn’t really matter.  He was hurting and the wicked were happy.

Isn’t that when we usually experience a crisis of faith?  When we’re hurting.  I told you last week that I had a gall bladder attack a few months ago and the pain was very intense, but when I asked God to take it away, He didn’t.  That is when your faith struggles the most, when you are suffering.  Does God really care about me?  Is He really able to take care of my needs?  Does He really exist?  Is the Christian faith really true?

Asaph was tempted to talk about his doubts publicly.  He didn’t because he was not going to destroy the faith of others.  That would be a betrayal of God’s people.  It’s one thing if a down and out sinner talks of his or her doubts and challenges people’s faith, but it is another when a spiritual giant does that.  We might could handle one of our fellow members expressing doubts, but if our pastor told us we were foolish to believe what we believe, that would have a greater impact.

I am a big fan of several comedy duos:  Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, Flight of the Conchords, and one more recent, Rhett and Link.  Are you familiar with Rhett and Link?  They started out making funny commercials, real commercials, for local businesses.  You can see these on Youtube.  They’re hilarious.  But before all this they were responsible for entertainment for Campus Crusade for Christ’s staff and workers conferences.  They were avid believers.  But recently they have departed from the faith and they have spoken of their reasons for doing so on their podcast, which is called Ear Biscuits.  These are influential guys and so their unbelief has impact.  I have listened to their reasons for leaving Christianity and I found their reasons for unbelief to be lacking in real evidence.  But others will be persuaded by their reasons.  Is it really right for them to do this?

It was not right for Asaph to do it, or so he believed.  But notice something else Asaph says that gives us a real clue to something in his faith that is askew.  He is definitely unhappy with God for letting the wicked prosper and not prospering the righteous.  But he exhibits a bit of unrighteousness in himself when he questions, in verse 13:

¹³ Did I purify my heart
and wash my hands in innocence for nothing?

Do you catch the significance of that question?  Why do you or should you do good?  Why should you purify your heart and wash your hands in innocence?  Is it so you can get something good from God?  Do you want your kids obeying you only to get an allowance?  Isn’t doing good good in and of itself?  I had a pastor in my youth who loved to quip that some people got paid for being good, but he was good for nothing.  Shouldn’t we be ‘good for nothing’?  Not for pay but because being good is good?

What Asaph is showing us here, in his deep pain, is something of his true heart.  God is good to those who are pure in heart, he believed, but by “good” what Asaph really meant was, “God gives a payoff to those who are pure in heart.”  He prospers those who believe.  Asaph was a believer in the prosperity gospel before there was a prosperity gospel.  This is Asaph’s way of signaling us that there is something in him that needs correction in his dark night journey of the soul.  This is what he discovers and shares with us in the last half of this psalm.

Asaph’s Course Correction

¹⁶ When I tried to understand all this,
it seemed hopeless

Have you been there?  I’ve been there.  It is a horrible feeling.  It is as if you are in an earthquake and every sure footing you’ve had is gone and you are out of control.  You can’t see a way to faith when everything you have believed is called into question.  What was it that prevented Asaph from slipping?

¹⁷ until I entered God’s sanctuary.

Now this is a strange statement to me.  Asaph was a Levite, who was around the sanctuary of God all the time.  The Levites were responsible for taking care of the Tabernacle, and later, the Temple.  But Levites were not allowed into the sanctuary.  Only their Levite brothers the priests were allowed to do that.  David also talked as if he entered the sanctuary when he said, “So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory” (Psalm 63:2) and the psalms encourage everyone to “Praise God in his sanctuary” (Psalm 150:1).  Isaiah was not a priest either, but he had a vision of God in His sanctuary (Isaiah 6), and this probably gets more at the meaning of Asaph.  He didn’t literally enter God’s sanctuary, for that would have been forbidden.  But he spiritually did so.  He communed with God.

Honestly, this is what has helped me the most when I have had doubts.  I’ve talked about them with God.  Sometimes He has spoken directly to my heart, as He seems to have done with Asaph.  Other times He leads me to a source that quells my doubts, that answers the questions I could not find answers to.  God gave Asaph two answers to his two problems.  God answered his problem about the wicked prospering, and He answered his problem about the righteous suffering.

Then I understood their destiny.
¹⁸ Indeed, you put them in slippery places;
you make them fall into ruin.
¹⁹ How suddenly they become a desolation!
They come to an end, swept away by terrors.

²⁰ Like one waking from a dream,
Lord, when arising, you will despise their image.

Asaph was assured by God that there would indeed be justice for the wicked.  Only, it wouldn’t be in all cases what Asaph considered timely.  Asaph had seen wicked people die prosperous, without divine judgment.  But God is promising justice.  So, it must come after they have died.  Their destiny, what will happen to their souls after they die, is desolation and terrors.  It is like Jesus’ account of Lazarus and the rich man.  The rich man seemed to prosper all the way to the end of his life.  But in the afterlife, he suffered.

Are we happy with that answer?  Not always, because we see the suffering the wicked cause for the righteous and long for it to be judged now.  But sometimes God delays judgment until death.  God only guarantees judgment at that point.

So, God gives Asaph an answer to the prosperity of the wicked, and then He hones in on Asaph, to help him see the bit of wickedness in Asaph’s own heart that has caused Asaph’s problem with his own lack of prospering.

²¹ When I became embittered
and my innermost being was wounded,
²² I was stupid and didn’t understand;
I was an unthinking animal toward you.

God helps Asaph see that his problem was stemming from bitterness and from a stupid-ness that was not human-like but animal-like, like a brute beast.  This is what happened to Job.  Job, we are told, by God Himself, was the most righteous man on earth.  He was not suffering because he had sinned, as his friends tried to persuade him was the case.  God had a sovereign purpose in Job’s suffering.  But Job ended up expressing to God that it was God who was lacking in understanding, or He would not have allowed Job to suffer as he did.  Job thought God needed to be convinced that Job had not sinned and so didn’t deserve to suffer.  Job justified himself above God, thought he knew better than God.

Aren’t we the same way? When we see a situation of injustice we think, “If I were God, I would not allow this to happen, but I would bring about swift change, just change, to make things right.”  And we especially see that when we are the ones hurting.  We know better than God how things should go.  We wouldn’t say it that way, but that’s what we are really thinking.  But God helps Asaph see something he hadn’t seen before.

²³ Yet I am always with you;
you hold my right hand.
²⁴ You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me up in glory.

God had not given up on Asaph.  He hadn’t left Asaph to the winds of suffering, just as He had not abandoned Job.  Asaph had always been with God and God had always been holding Asaph with His right hand.  Asaph was safe in God’s care, even when, maybe especially when, Asaph was suffering.  God was doing something in Asaph.  He was using this dark night to grow Asaph in his devotion to God.  He was doing the same thing in Job’s life.  He is doing the same thing in our lives.

And so, this led Asaph to a powerful conclusion.

²⁵ Who do I have in heaven but you?
And I desire nothing on earth but you.

This is the key statement of the whole psalm.  Asaph looked for prosperity from God because he was being pure in heart, pleasing to God.  He had failed to realize that God was his prosperity.  Your prosperity as a Christian is not to be found in material possessions but in knowing God.  If you are obeying God to get reward in this life, you are not truly worshiping Him.  Knowing Him is the ultimate prosperity and reward.  What corrected Asaph’s false ideas about the prosperity of believers and the judgment of unbelievers was an understanding given by God that judgment is sure for unbelievers and that the prosperity of believers is knowing God.

I was sure when I graduated seminary that God was now going to give me a great church position where I could use all the stuff He had given me.  Yet, day after day no great church position was afforded me.  I told myself that the reason was probably because I wasn’t as faithful in my devotions as I needed to be.  I wasn’t being pure of heart enough.  I ended up having to get a job as a substitute teacher for Shelby County schools.  I hardly got called and our financial situation was getting bad.  I ended up getting a permanent teaching position at a private Christian academy and that helped, but the pay was still abysmal.  Then I got a job on the staff of my home church, but the main job I had was running the printing press they had.  I wasn’t trained for that in seminary!  But God was using all this experience to complete my training, and it was good training.  I had to learn that I have no one in heaven but God, and I’m still learning to desire nothing on earth but Him.

So finally, I was able to say with Asaph, verses 26 -28.

²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart,
my portion forever.
²⁷ Those far from you will certainly perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
²⁸ But as for me, God’s presence is my good.
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
so I can tell about all you do.

The Levites were told that they would not get a portion of the land of Israel for their own, like the other tribes got.  Instead, Yahweh told them, He would be their portion.  Asaph finally learned that and affirmed that God was his portion forever.  Now he was proclaiming what he had learned, telling all about what God does, how God’s presence in our lives is our ultimate good, and despite the suffering we may endure, God is our refuge in and through it all.

Have you learned that?  Can you sing with John Newton,

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

Lord Jesus, use these dark nights in the journey of our souls to lead us into increasing devotion to You.  Teach us as you did Asaph and Job and John Newton and so many other saints of Yours, that You alone are our prosperity, that even if we never experience wealth and perfect health that You are our portion forever, You are our refuge, and You are indeed good to those who are pure in heart.  Help us not to measure our relationship to You by our prosperity, and certainly not measure it by the prosperity of the wicked.  They will perish but You will take us up in glory.  Even as their final judgment is at death, so our ultimate reward is also at death.  Lead us into Your sanctuary that we might learn from You what it means to find answers to questions we have hopelessly failed to answer about our faith.  Open our hearts to hear You when you teach us.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.