Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 73 | Date: November 24, 2024 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

We continue today our studies on the Psalms. Open, if you would, to Psalm 73. This is a Psalm of Asaph. We might title his theme, “Faith on the Brink.”

Psalm 73: “Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped. For I was curious or envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are. They’re not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore, pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness. Their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice. Loftily, they threaten opposition. They set their mouths against the heavens. Their tongues strut through the earth. Therefore, this people turn back to them and find no fault in them. And they say, ‘How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?’ Behold, these are the wicked. Always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain, I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long, I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned their end. Truly, you set them in slippery places. You make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors, like a dream when one awakes. Oh, Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.”

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, in this much-beloved psalm that speaks to the experience of so many of us too often, we find the struggles of one of your saints from ages past. We pray that you will minister through his inspired words, that you’ll minister to us and strengthen our faith and our resolve to serve you faithfully. Renew our confidence in your goodness and your faithfulness to us. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

In our studies through the Psalms, we have seen repeatedly that the overall theme of the Psalter is the establishing of God’s kingdom on the earth. This was Israel’s bedrock tenet of faith: that God was king. God who created the world had made Israel his people, and he was king. He rules over all, and he will, through Israel, through his promise to David, establish his rule on earth. God rules in his kingdom all over the earth.

But that raises a problem, a problem that’s often encountered in the Psalter, and that is: If, for example, in the words of Psalm 1, it is the righteous who are blessed under God’s rule, then why is there so much evil? Why is there evil at all? Why is there so much of it? Why is there evil in high places? Why does sinfulness and wickedness seem so often to go so unchecked? And then, more specifically, why do the wicked seem so often to prosper when the righteous seem so often to struggle? If God rules, if he’s king over all, and if he is righteous, and if he has promised to bless his people, then why so much evil, and specifically, why do the wicked prosper when the righteous so often don’t seem to?

And so that can become a struggle of faith. It’s what we call a theodicy when we try to explain that. How do we justify the ways of God in the earth with specific regard to evil? How do we continue to affirm that God is righteous and good and all-powerful, and yet account for the evil that we find in the world? Of course, the famous exposition of this question and answer is in the book of Job, where we find it at length, but we find it also many times throughout the Proverbs, and we find it also often in the Psalms. You might remember we encountered this in Psalm 37 and in Psalm 49, where they deal with this problem of why the wicked prosper, why there’s so much evil in the world, and why do the righteous suffer? And that’s the theme here of Psalm 73 as well.

This is a Psalm of Asaph. Asaph was appointed by David to oversee the new musical dimension of temple worship that David had established in Israel. Asaph was a faithful man. He was a musician. He was also a Levite, a priest. He was also a prophet. We find that in his psalms. We find some 12 of his psalms here in the Psalter: Psalm 50, and then a cluster of them here, Psalms 73 to 83, are all psalms of Asaph. We also find Asaph mentioned, not quite by name, but by title, many times in the Psalter when David writes a psalm and then writes at the end, “To the choirmaster. To Asaph, the choirmaster.” So David writes his psalms, hands them over to Asaph, and says these are to be used in the worship of God at the temple, in the temple services.

Doubts That He Had Entertained

But here in Psalm 73, Asaph confesses for us that he had a period of time when it was a real crisis of faith. That’s verse two: “As for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped.” So there was a period of his life where he struggled with this problem, this seeming contradiction of faith and reality. And he records that for us by way of broad overview in Psalm 73 verses 1 to 14. He expresses his doubts, the doubts that he had entertained and what caused them. And then verses 15 through 28, he confesses how misguided those doubts were, and he expresses how he came about to his newfound faith.

Also, just by way of brief overview, there are a couple of words in this psalm that Asaph uses repeatedly at certain points through the psalm that show various affirmations and various turning points in the psalm. I’ll mention one of them now, the other I’ll mention in just a moment. But we find in verse one, the first word: “Truly.” You’ll find that again in verse 13; you’ll find it in verse 18. This is an affirmation now that he’s making, a conclusion that he’s reached. So verse one begins this theodicy: “Truly God is good to Israel.” And then in verse 13, it’s not rendered “truly” in the English version, but it’s there in the original. Asaph’s personal struggle he’s been dealing with—his faith doesn’t seem to match reality—and so he says, “truly,” or our version renders it, “All in vain,” but “truly in vain I have kept my heart clean.” And then verse 18, there’s a turning point again. Asaph comes to grips with a theology that’s much bigger than what he had entertained before. And he says again, “Truly, you have set them in slippery places.” We’ll see those as we go along.

All right, in verses one and two then, we have Asaph’s introductory summary of the message of his psalm. He states his conclusion up front in verse one: “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.” This is Asaph’s confession of faith. Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. So this is, again, a foundational tenet of Israel’s faith. God not only was king, but this God who is the creator, king, has made us his. He has chosen Abraham. He made promises to Abraham. He made of Abraham a great nation. He rescued that nation out of slavery in Egypt. He brought us to Sinai. He made promises to us, made a great nation out of us, picked one out of him, David, and made promises to him that his son would be king over all. God is good to Israel. He’s made us his and he has made wonderful promises to us.

The end of verse one refines and narrows the affirmation just a little bit. Verse one: “Truly God is good to Israel.” And then he says, “to those who are pure in heart.” In other words, Asaph recognizes there’s what we will call later on—what we in the New Testament call, and then what Paul alludes to in Romans chapter nine—there’s an Israel within Israel. Israel’s a nation, but it is the faithful in Israel specifically to whom God has made certain promises, and he recognizes that here as God has made a promise to Israel, to those who are pure in heart specifically. And it’s clearly among those who are pure in heart that Asaph numbers himself. I’m one of those. I’ve followed the Lord faithfully. I’ve kept covenant.

But it’s just that belief that gives rise to Asaph’s confusion. Beginning with verse two, he tells us about this confusion that he had, and he starts to give us a contrast. Notice the contrast between verses one and two. He starts out verse one: “Truly,” here’s an affirmation of faith. “Truly, God is good to Israel.” Here’s his assurance, his confidence, affirmation that God has made promises and he’ll keep them. And then we have a turn in verse two already: “But as for me…” That introduces a contrast. Asaph will use this same expression again when we get to verse 22, again in verse 23, again in verse 28. “As for me, but as for me…” So he’s making an affirmation, a conclusion that he has reached. So “Truly God is good to Israel, but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.”

So Asaph begins the psalm affirming that God is good, but then in verse two confesses that there was a time when he almost didn’t believe that anymore. He’d almost given up that faith. So in verse one, when Asaph begins with this great affirmation of God’s goodness, it becomes clear in verse two that verse one is not just the mere reciting of a creed, but it’s a conviction that Asaph has newly come to. It’s something that he’s always confessed, but it’s a new, renewed conviction that he has come to through this experience that he’s going to explain for us. And he’s convinced now afresh that God is good, but he says in verse two, there was a time when that faith was really shaken.

And he explains further in verse three: “For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Prosperity there is a Hebrew word that all of you have heard: Shalom. Peace. It’s not just peace in terms of absence of war, but it’s wholeness, completeness. We’ve got it good in every way. And he said, “I saw the prosperity, the shalom of the arrogant and the wicked.” These people are not just wicked. They’re arrogant. They’re boastful about it. He’ll talk about that more through the psalm. And he noticed they’ve really got it good. They’re wicked. They’re arrogant. They’ve got it made. There’s no consequence to their sin. They’ve got a happy, carefree life.

And he explains further in verse four: “For they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are. They are not stricken like the rest of mankind.” So they have a healthy, pain-free, carefree, good life. Their bodies are—and the expression here, the way it’s translated seems contradictory—”fat and sleek.” How do you get both of those, fat and sleek? The word here is just fat. Now the word, though, in its connotations connotes healthy, strong, sound. You have it used with regard to cattle and sheep and with regard to people as well. They’re strong. This, by the way, is the same word used in Judges chapter three when Ehud the lefty let Eglon the king have it. Remember he stuck his knife in and the fat came over the knife so he couldn’t pull it out. I always wondered about that. Fat shouldn’t be hard to pull a knife out. It’s muscle, probably. It’s sound. He’s a strong man, and he couldn’t get the knife out. That’s the idea. So as they translate it, fat and sleek. These people are healthy. They’re strong. They’ve got it made. And even in their personal health, as well as their wealth, these people have got it made.

Verses six and seven: not only do they have it made and have this happy life, they’re proud and they’re violent over it. “Therefore, pride is their necklace.” What an expression. This is poetry. The jewelry they wear is pride. This is what they’re like. Their pride is their necklace. “Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness.” This is a different word for fatness, and it just means fat, and it connotes fatness. “Their eyes swell out through fatness,” and eyes don’t swell. This is a metaphor that eyes aren’t that fat. It’s just the idea that whatever they see, they pursue, they help themselves to it, and there are no limits to what they take for themselves. They don’t withhold anything they want from themselves. They’re able to pursue every pleasure and take it to themselves. They’re at the center of their own dreams and they live out every one of them. These are self-made men. These are self-satisfied men. They’ve got it good and they brag about it. They wear pride as a necklace. “Look what I’ve done for myself.”

Verses 8 and following expand a bit: “They scoff and speak with malice. Loftily, they threaten oppression.” That is, the idea there is that they mock righteousness. And in fact, they even dare anyone to interfere. “I didn’t have to be righteous to get all this. I’ve ignored God. I’ve lived the way I want. I’ve pursued everything I want to pursue, and look what I’ve got. I’ve got it all.” These are self-made men and they boast of it. And how dare you tell me I need to be righteous? What’s the point of that? And it’s the same, in fact, verse nine, it’s the same with respect to God himself. “They set their mouths against the heavens and their tongue struts through the earth.” So these people are not only ignoring God, they have a settled enmity against God. They refuse his rule. They despise his law. They’re confident. There’s no fear of God. “We’ve done this ourselves. Look what we’ve accomplished.”

As a result, verse 10 and 11, they attract followers. They have an influence. Verse 10: “Therefore his people,” that is the Lord’s people, “turn back to them and find no fault in them. And they say, ‘How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?'” That is to say, professing believers see what’s going on. They look at these people who are evil, and they see how they prosper, and how it’s without consequence that they pursue their evil and ignore God, and there’s no fear of God, and everything goes so well for them, that happy, carefree life. And they reason, what’s the point? Why am I bothering with all of these spiritual disciplines? And so in verse three, Asaph confesses, looking at all of this made him envious, jealous. “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They are corrupt and yet they have it better than I have. So what’s the point?”

We get to verses 12 and following. Asaph compares this further to his own experience. And here’s where his faith really begins to slip. He has a “poor me” kind of contrast with the wicked. Notice verse 12: “Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease. They increase in riches. All in vain, I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long, I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.” Here I’ve been faithful to God. And what did it get me? It didn’t get me as much as it got them. They are spiritually bankrupt, they’re corrupt. But materially, physically, they have it better than I do. I would gladly stand next to this guy over here before God, but it seems that before God, this man is more blessed than I am. And so all he can conclude is verse 13—and here we have that expression again, truly—our English translation has rendered it: “All truly in vain I have kept my heart clean.”

He struggles over this seeming contradiction. They have it so well. They’ve got it so good. I’ve kept covenant, they have not. I’ve been faithful, they have not. And yet I have been stricken, verse 14, and rebuked every morning. I suffer hardship of whatever kind it is. He doesn’t specify. And yet they have this happy, carefree life. And so verse 13, he kind of explodes with this exclamation. What’s the point? “Truly in vain, for nothing, I have been faithful and kept my heart clean.” These are the questions of someone whose faith does not seem to meet with reality. I believe one thing. The reality that I see and experience doesn’t seem to match. This was Job’s struggle; this was a struggle with Job’s friends. They assumed—they assumed wrongly, but they assumed—that there’s always a temporal, here and now, immediate, tit-for-tat relationship. Faithfulness, you’re blessed, you’ll have it good. If you’re not faithful, you’ll have it bad and you’ll be judged. And that was just exactly Job’s confusion. He seemed to buy into that kind of theology and couldn’t figure out because he knew in his case that wasn’t the explanation for his experience.

We find a reflection of this kind of thinking in John chapter nine. You remember, here’s a man who’s blind from birth. The disciples ask Jesus, “Who sinned that this man should be blind? He himself or his parents?” And it just assumes that if something is bad, it’s because you’ve done something bad. And if you experience something good, it’s because you’ve been good. And we can think the same way. We’re surprised when the bad guy gets ahead, and we’re confused when the good guy suffers. The irony is, particularly at a church like ours, we profess to believe in sovereign grace. Then God begins to—we watch God distribute grace sovereignly—and we become confused. And just as shoddy theology, like Job’s friends, inevitably leads to wrong expectations, so also if we don’t align our feelings with our faith—not the other way around, but if we don’t align our feelings with our faith—we’ll be confused like Asaph was, and it’ll become a crisis of our faith.

So verses 1 to 14, Asaph says, “I believe that God is good to Israel. He is good to the righteous. But there was a time when I questioned it. My foot had almost slipped.” Verse two: “My feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped.” I had nearly given up. Verse 13 says it even worse. He’s concluded something: “Truly, truly for nothing I have kept my heart clean. What’s the point of serving God if the wicked prosper and the righteous go to the wall?”

Verse 15, we have a bit of a turn and Asaph begins to think better. “If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children.” So Asaph is confessing here that, “I had these thoughts and I was slipping. My foot had almost stumbled and I had finally concluded it’s for nothing that I serve God, but I couldn’t dare say it out loud because it would have affected others in the congregation and it wouldn’t have been right, it wouldn’t have been fair.” But verse 15 shows that there’s conscience left and he’s struggling and wanting to turn.

How He Came About To His Newfound Faith

So how did Asaph regain his footing? What do you do when you find yourself at a point like this and your foot is slipping? The first answer—and we’ll see this as we go through, I’ll state it up front—the first answer is to recall, recall your own limitations. Recall your own limitations. You remember the theodicy of Job and the final answer that was given to Job? We get it late in the book of Job. Finally God speaks. You remember what God says to Job? You remember that long discourse in chapter 38 and following? “Where were you when I made the world? How in the world did I ever do this without you? How could I ever have created such a place like this with all of its fine balance of creation? How could I have done that without you?” Of course, it’s a tongue-in-cheek way of saying God is God and you are not. It’s presumptuous. It is presumptuous to expect that we should be able to understand all the ways of God.

This has been called rightly—and I think very vividly in a right way—this has been called “keyhole theology.” You know, it’s like evaluating a house by walking up, looking through the keyhole, and saying, “Got it. I understand. I know this house.” The perspective just isn’t big enough. How can you do that? And the point is then that we are so limited in time, we’re so limited in space that we cannot possibly expect to understand all that God does. He calls us to trust him. And it’s verses 16 and 17 where Asaph notes just this kind of turnaround. Verse 16: “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task.” It was beyond me. Verse 17: “Until I went into the sanctuary of God, and then I discerned their end.”

So Asaph went to the temple with all of its reminders of God’s majesty and his goodness and reminders of his justice, his glory, his greatness. He doesn’t tell us here precisely what he saw, precisely what he heard. Maybe a prophet spoke out at the entrance of the temple. Maybe a sage was there and reasoned with him. Maybe one of the choirs sang Psalm 37 or Psalm 49. And maybe he saw in the sacrificial system the expressions of God’s holiness and justice. Asaph’s not concerned to tell us the specifics. What he wants to tell us is that he found his solution to this dilemma in the worship of God. He went to the temple, and there with the people of God, Asaph was reminded of God. And here his perspective became bigger.

In verses 17 and following, Asaph spells out some of the theological realignments that he had to make in his own thinking. Verse 17: “I went into the sanctuary of God, then I discerned their end.” Okay. Okay. Right. Let’s get a better, bigger perspective here. They’ve got it good, but it won’t last. And verse 18 and following expand—notice again, we have “Truly”—”Truly, you set them in slippery places.” Here he’s come around to another conclusion. “Truly, you have set them in slippery places. You make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors, like a dream when one awakes. Oh Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.”

Now you notice here the reversal in Asaph’s thinking. Go back to verse two: “As for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.” And now verse 18: “Truly you set them in slippery places, you make them fall to ruin.” That is to say, “I’m not the one in a slippery place here; they are.” You see, thinking is turning around now. This is a familiar perspective in the Psalms. We see this in Psalm 37, we see it in Psalm 49, we see it in other places, many of the Psalms where David laments his unjust persecution. We see this reminded theme that God is king, he is righteous, and he is just, and he is all-powerful, and in the end, everyone will know it. We were warned of this at the outset, the front door of the Psalms, in Psalm 1: “The way of the wicked will perish.” And so Asaph says, “I’m not the one in a slippery place. They are. God is king. And in the end, all will know it. And justice will be served.”

So in other words, Asaph is reminded that the prosperity or the prosperous wicked are not as well off as it may seem. Verse 20: like a dream in the morning, one day they’ll be gone and it’ll be over. But verse 18 is fascinating. It takes us a step further than what I’ve just mentioned. It just hints at—it’s clearly there, cryptically if it is, but it’s clearly there—that Asaph identifies a further theological adjustment to his thinking and it has to do with the sovereignty of God. Notice verse 18: “Truly, You set them in slippery places.” You set them; God sets them in slippery places. So verses five and following, earlier in the Psalm: they’re not in trouble as others are, they wear pride as their necklace, they speak loftily, they strut, they defy the heavens, they’ve got it good. “Look at us, look what we’ve done, we are self-made, self-sufficient men. We’ve set ourselves in a good place.” And now Asaph says, they haven’t set themselves anywhere. God put them there. All of this happy, carefree life, this health and prosperity that they enjoy, God had given that to them. They’re not self-made men at all. They had not set themselves anywhere. God in sovereign mercy had given them their health and their wealth. They are not in control of their lives. Verse 18: he set them in their happy carefree life in sovereign mercy.

But verse 18 goes further than that. Truly, where God had set them was not in a happy place after all. Where God had put them was in slippery places. God had set them up to fall. This is the doctrine of reprobation working itself out in real life. God favored them with all of these good things, they take credit for it—”Look at what we’ve done”—until finally they say, “We don’t need God, he doesn’t matter at all.” And God gives them blessing after blessing after blessing. And they take it as though it was self-made. And in the end, God condemns them for their rejection of his mercy to them. He set them in slippery places. Asaph went to the temple that day, self-absorbed, thinking of himself in contrast with others. But in the temple now, he’s reminded that there’s a God who rules over all things, past, present, and future. The wicked are not in charge; God is. And if they prosper for a time and enjoy it with a happy carefree life, Asaph says it’s only because God has set them in slippery places. And their very prosperity has become the occasion of their unbelief and the ground of their condemnation.

And so we have this exclamation again, “Truly.” Verse one: “Truly God is good to Israel.” Verse 13—it’s not in our version—Asaph’s personal struggle here, faith didn’t seem to match reality, so “Truly in vain I have kept my heart clean.” But now, verse 18, Asaph comes to grips with a much bigger and a grander theology than he had considered before: “Truly, you set them in slippery places.” So verse 1, he states the message of the psalm up front. Verse 13, he briefly interrupts with that moment of confusion: “Truly, I’ve done all this for nothing.” And then verse 18, he comes back around and says, “Truly, he set them in slippery places.”

So when we get to verses 21 and following, Asaph has come completely around and he confesses, “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you.” I was like an animal. The Bible has wonderful things to say and important things to say about the difference between men and animals. It has to do, of course, at its root with the image of God. We are created in God’s image, men and women. Theologians still debate exactly what that entails and what it means specifically. What Asaph has in mind here is that dimension of God’s image in us that enables him to reason and to think through to the far end of things. The ability to see life whole and the ability to look ahead even beyond life.

I hope I don’t offend you by this, but your dog and your cat can’t do that. No dog and no cat ever sat down with little pups or little kittens and said, “Let me explain to you what we as dogs have learned throughout the centuries. My father taught me and your grandfather taught us and our fathers before that taught us that here’s how you live and here’s how you look ahead in life. And here’s how you plan for retirement. And here’s how you make calculations to see how retirement will be. And then thinking about death and the seriousness of it. And then after death…” It’s never happened. They’ve never sat down with them and said, “Here’s how you plan for retirement. There’ll come a time when we become weak and we won’t be able to function like we used to. And you’ve got to plan for that. And then you’ve got to plan for death and after death.” Your pet squirrel or anything else has never done that.

And Asaph says, “I was confused. But I was confused only because my thinking was on the level of an animal. I’m a man created in God’s image. I can think bigger than that. My eye was on small things in a small world in a short period of time, forgetting all the while that God has a much larger theater in which to display his glory and his justice and his goodness than the short span of my lifetime.” And meeting with the people of God in the temple that day, his thinking was adjusted. He began to see bigger and better.

I remember this expression, “as for me.” We saw it in verse two. “As for me, my feet had almost stumbled.” Truly God is good, but “as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.” Then we see it again in verse 22. Again, it’s not in the English translation: “As for me, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you.” This is a turning point in his thinking. And then we have it again in verse 23: “Nevertheless”—it’s translated in our version—or “As for me, I’m continually with you. You hold me by my right hand.” So here’s another theological reminder, a conclusion that he’s reached that marks a turning point in his thinking.

He recognized that he had almost slipped off the edge of faith. And if he had, if he had slipped off that edge of faith, then his end would be the end of those unfaithful ones in verse 27 who perish. But he didn’t slip off the edge. He hung on. Now wait a minute, that’s not what the text says, does it? He hung on? No, what he says is, it was not my hold of God that kept me. It was his hold of me. “You hold me by the right hand.” You want to know why you are still a believer? Despite whatever suffering, whatever offenses, whatever disappointments, whatever disillusionment you’ve had with the people of God in the church, whatever offenses you’ve endured by them, you didn’t throw in the towel. You didn’t give it up. You know why? It’s not because you had such a firm hold on him, but because he has such a firm hold on you. “He holds me by his right hand.” That’s verse 23.

Verse 24, he does more than that. He guides me. “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me into glory.” All through life, and through death, and after death, and all through eternity, he holds me by my right hand and keeps me, and makes me his. Aren’t you glad that at the end of the day, your perseverance does not depend on you? Now, don’t misunderstand this. You must persevere. This is very serious. You must persevere. And there are plenty of statements of that through the New Testament as well. “You are my disciples if you continue in my words.” You must persevere. One of the grand things about the Christian life is that it is fueled by this assurance that what God requires of us, he gives us in grace. Whatever perseverance we have shown and whatever advancements we have made in our Christian experience, it is only because God has guided us with his counsel and held us by his right hand. And in glory, we’ll still be saying the same thing. In glory, we will look back and we will say with the Apostle Paul, “Whom he foreknew, he predestined, and whom he predestined, he called, and whom he called, he justified, and whom he justified, he glorified.” Or the words of Paul in Philippians, “He that began a good work in us, brought it to completion all the way to the day of Jesus Christ.”

And so with all of these kinds of thoughts going on in Asaph’s mind, we get to verse 25 and he just explodes in worship with a fresh reminder of all he has in God and all that God has done for him and belonging—belonging to God as he does. He says in verse 25, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you. They can have all their prosperity, I have you. And with that, I have more than they have.” Verse 26, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near to God. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works.”

So this now is Asaph’s concluding summary. After his struggle for faith, he comes to this. And again, verse 28, we have that, “but as for me,” introducing the stark contrast. “As for me”—we saw it in verse 22, verse 23, now again verse 28. These are turning points in his struggle. Asaph’s feet now are firmly placed on solid ground. He’s now learned to think like a man who knows God. And in fact, the entire experience has served to stir his soul to further faithfulness. He says that in verse 28, “I have made the Lord God my refuge.” Why? “That I may tell of your wondrous works.”

In What Ways Ought This Psalm To Guide Our Thinking?

Now in what ways ought this psalm to guide our thinking? When we find ourselves envious of the wicked, what does this psalm teach us? Well, first of all, and this just quickly, as I’ve already mentioned, this teaches us to remind ourselves that God is God and we are not. We cannot see the whole picture. We often cannot understand why God does what he does, but we don’t need to. All we need to know is that God knows. All we need to know is that God is good, and God is just, and God is all-powerful, and God will accomplish his purpose, and therefore, in the end, everything will be made right. Shame on us when our thinking descends to the level of that of an animal. We think as though this is all there is, and our thinking is on such a shallow level like that, and then, to make it worse, we presume to judge God for what he has done. It’s a shamefulness of mistrusting God when things don’t go our way. It’s just small thinking on the one hand, and on the other hand, it’s just an arrogant presumption on our part. We’ve looked through that keyhole. “We’ve got this. God, what are you doing?” So the first thing this psalm reminds us of is to teach us to remind ourselves that God is God and we are not. Don’t expect that you should understand all that God knows.

Number two, it teaches us to recall and reaffirm Asaph’s affirmation of faith. And it’s an affirmation of faith that frames this psalm. Verse one: “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.” And then verse 28 at the end: “For me it is good to be near God.” The prosperous wicked may think that they have it good, Asaph says, but I’m the one that’s got it good. And this remains true, whatever the circumstance, whatever the prosperity of the wicked, we remind ourselves of the goodness that we’ve received from God that’s all undeserved. And that although in the end, as he tells us in verse 27, the wicked will receive what they deserve, in the end, we will not. And we will not precisely because God is good, and God has sent us his son, and he has stepped into our place, and he has assumed every one of our responsibilities. He faced all of the temptations we face, including this one that Asaph speaks of here, and he’s gone through them all faithfully. And he goes to the cross in our place, offering himself as sacrifice to God, bearing the curse of our sins and securing for us an eternal place with God in glory. Asaph’s song, verse one, will be our song forever. God is good. Truly, truly, God is good.

The Heidelberg Catechism begins with an echo. In its first question, it begins with an echo of verse 23. Verse 23, Asaph recognizes that God has held him by his right hand. There’s a faint echo of that in the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism. The question is, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” Answer: “That I am not my own, but I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all of my sins with his precious blood. He set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, all things work together for my salvation. And because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life. And he makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.” In every circumstance, it remains true. Truly, God is good. And for all of eternity, this will be our song. God is good. Amen.