Psalm 73
Part of a series on the Psalms, Songs of Experience.
This week: Doubt. Dave Cawston walks us through Psalm 73. How can we keep journeying towards God when we become distracted and can feel our foot slip?
Please note: this is a recording from our Sunday service currently meeting on Zoom, as well as socially distanced in church. Everyone is welcome to join us, for Zoom details see our home page.
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Transcript
Good afternoon. My name is Dave and I’m a member of the congregation here at St Barnabas. Last week we started our summer series – “Songs of Experience” from the Psalms and this week we turn to Psalm 73.
Psalm 73 was written by a man called Asaph who was one of the leaders of music appointed by King David. Asaph is in the grip of a spiritual crisis. He’s hit with the problem of why wicked people seem to prosper and this causes him to question his faith and his path in life. In Asaph’s words, in verse 2, it almost caused him to lose his “foothold”. During Lockdown my youngest son, Franklin, has continued to develop his love of climbing. Trees, walls, pretty much anything vertical (including me!) Frank will scale it. I was cleaning his bedroom the other week. I looked out of the window and there, outside, almost face to face with me, was Frank 6 metres up clinging to the branches of our silver birch tree and grinning like a Cheshire cat!
In Psalm 73 it is as if Asaph is climbing, journeying up towards God. But he’s distressed and distracted. He loses his focus and his foot starts to slip.
In the first half of the Psalm from verses 1-14 Asaph opens his heart to God and pours out his feelings and his complaint. The second half of the Psalm, from verses 15-28, finds him recovering his faith and returning to God.
So, let us look at these two halves of Psalm 73 together. Firstly at Asaph’s spiritual complaint – the situation, thoughts and feelings that cause him to question his faith - and thenSecondly at how he answers these questions. How he returns to find strength, hope and faith. How he stops his foot slipping and continues his climb towards his God.
So first, What is ASAPH’S SPIRITUAL PROBLEM? WHAT CAUSES HIM TO SLIP?
Asaph says in verse 3: “For I envied the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked”. He is envious of the success of others. He looks around and sees people who are enjoying the pleasures of this life: They are pursuing riches. – look down at verse 12 where they are described as “….always carefree, they increase in wealth”. And they are fit and healthy – in verse 4 he says “They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills”.All of that contrasts pointedly with Asaph’s own situation. While his peers enjoy life he is suffering. He writes in verse 14 “All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning.”We aren’t told what specifically is wrong with him. His earlier envy of other people’s health suggests that he’s suffering physically …… but we don’t know. And perhaps that is the point. It allows us as readers to place our own daily struggles into Asaph’s narrative.
So…. Asaph is struggling and his peers are succeeding. They are healthy. They are building their little empires and getting richer and richer. They are enjoying life. And these people are popular. In verse 10 Asaph indicates that even God’s people are being seduced by their success and turning to follow their ways. He writes: “Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance”. So, when Asaph says in verse 21 that his “heart was grieved and my spirit embittered” we know that he’s got that bitter taste of jealousy on his tongue.
But that’s not all. What really grieves Asaph is the morality of these people. In verses 6-9 he tells us that they are arrogant and proud. Their boastful attitudes lead to violent actions, because they think they can ‘get away with it’. They threaten others and daringly talk as if they are God himselfas if the- whole world is theirs. The King James translation of these verses reads : “Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out in fatness: they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth.”These people ignore God. Their disobedience and disrespect towards Him is clear to Aspah and yet………God seems to reward them with the good things in life.To make matters worse, here is Asaph, in comparison a good man, and he has no worldly reward. He is suffering. How can God be so unjust? If He is truly good then perhaps He simply can’t see these injustices? Or doesn’t he care? Or isn’t He there at all? Asaph complains in verse 13 “Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence”.
So Aspah is in spiritual turmoil. He’s questioning the very basis of his life. Is all the effort and suffering involved in following God worth it? Has he backed the wrong horse? Is a just and good God even there?My son Franklin’s climbing hero is a man called Tommy Caldwell. Caldwell is one of he world’s best free climbers. That means he climbs sheer mountain faces, the most treacherous routes in the world, without ropes. There he is, hundreds of feet up. One slip would mean he would fall to his death. And his hands and feet are clinging to small, millimeter deep undulations (not cracks or crags – undulations) in the rock surface.In verse 2 Asaph says “my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold”. He’s like Tommy Caldwell, clinging to the face of the mountain. Asaph is, if you like, climbing up towards God. This is his pilgrimage, and it’s hard. It takes effort. Every sinew is straining. And then he looks around at the other peaks. People seem to be scaling those with ease Many of them are cheating and using easier routes. There are crowds on the slopes cheering them on. Asaph is distracted and his foot starts to slip from its hold. Perhaps he should give up on this treacherous hard climb. Perhaps God isn’t there waiting for him at the top………
That’s the first half of Psalm 73. Asaph lays bare his problem before God…. And before us. And in doing so he poses us some questions:- Are we envious of those around us?- Do we get distracted in our faith by yearning after success or pleasure in this world?- Do the apparent injustices of this life makes us angry or doubtful?Let us look to the second half of Psalm 73 where we kind find some spiritual solutions to these problems. Because from his perilous position clinging to the mountain and then starting to slip and lose his foothold, Asaph manages to find FOUR key holds that enable him first to stop his slide and then to continue on his faithful climb towards God.
The first hold is a small one. Just a little undulation in the rockface. And we find it at the start of Aspah’s recovery in verse 15. He says “If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed your children”Asaph is ready to blurt out his doubts to his fellow believers but he knows that doing so would hurt a lot of people. He lays out an uncensored complaint to God but realises that he needs to think through and process his thoughts and feelings before sharing them with others.There was a time a few years ago when I really struggled to attend church. I arrived at the service in a grumpy mood, I sat through creche in a grumpy mood and I left in a grumpy mood. None of that is to my credit. Actually, the only thing that kept me coming to St Barnabas each week was the effect it would have on those around me if I didn’t. My boys wouldn’t be able to come to church. Hannah, my wife wouldn’t be supported. Perhaps it would have discouraged my friends when they learned that I had stopped attending. Here Asaph doesn’t know what’s going on but he, if you like, grabs hold of a negative. He stops thinking only of himself and thinks about the people around him. And that’s enough to stop the slide.
Incidentally, you could argue that the first step in Asaph’s recovery is actually his emotional openness before God. In pouring out his complaint in prayer Asaph is able to work through his emotions and thoughts. In the Old Testament this process is seen as a spiritual strength rather than the weakness we might take it for. Job is the obvious example of this. Job curses the day he was born. He complains to God. But rather than turning away from God because he thinks his emotions are unpalatable he pours them out to his Maker and at the end of the book he is deemed “faithful”.In a similar way, it is helpful to consider that Asaph’s feelings of envy and anger at injustice are not necessarily a sign of emotional or spiritual weakness. In fact the more we try to faithfully follow God the sharper these kind of worldly inequalities are going to cut. The more self-sacrificial our lives the more likely we are to be stung when we look around and see others enjoying what we have forsaken. So if you identify with Asaph’s feeling here be encouraged.
So, Asaph’s foot is giving way but he manages to find a small handhold to stop his downward spiritual spiral. And then he reaches up and grabs another…….
The second of our four hand holds or steps in his recovery is there in verses 16-17: “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me til I entered the sanctuary of God; then understood I their final destiny.” Asaph is weighed down by his thoughts until he goes to the “sanctuary” which for him meant the temple. Asaph goes to church. In the midst of his spiritual crisis he is able to keep going with his spiritual disciplines. For us these could include going to church, reading God’s word, praying, meeting with other Christians and acts of service. It is not these things in themselves that help us. They are means to an end. They bring us into the presence of our God. And notice also why he goes to the sanctuary. We can often think that going to church when we are down or suffering will make us feel better. And that might be true. The aesthetics of the building or an inspiring sermon or the beauty of the music may lift us up. But Asaph goes to “get understanding”. When I was a student up in Newcastle I often used to go to church in a state of stress and confusion. Lots of issues were on my mind and I went to church to find answers. But I didn’t get the answers to my worries. What I did get was a whole new set of questions and challenges that made me consider God and His priorities. And thinking through and understanding those challenges actually brought me a kind of peace. You could say that in Christianity you feel better when you start to think properly. My worries weren’t answered but they were put in perspective.
And that brings us onto Asaph’s next handhold to recovery…….Asaph’s third reach up the mountain is to see the Bigger Picture.:He says in verse 17 “…I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin”Asaph comes into God’s presence and God reminds him of the Bigger Picture. In this case that the success of the wicked is temporary. It is they who are on slippery ground, not Asaph. God takes him out of the micro and shows him the macro.
During Lockdown, to help deal with the stresses and strains of each day I developed a routine. At sunset I would climb up onto our house’s roof. This is a fairly risky process of squeezing myself through a velux rooflight and then pirouetting (gracefully), grabbing onto the top ridge of the rooflight and then scrabbling up our pitched tile roof whilst hoping not to slip off and fall three storeys into our front garden. At this point I would hear Hannah’s voice echoing up from below “Please don’t die Dave, you are looking after the kids tomorrow”. Having reached the summit I would sit on the rear flat roof and look west towards the setting sun. The vastness and beauty of the sky, the slowly moving clouds and the relative smallness of London lit by the last rays of the sun often helped me to restore some perspective on the events of that day. Perhaps it is similar to what is happening to Asaph here. God is reminding him that in the big scheme of things worldly success does not matter. The wicked and their achievements will have no lasting worth. In the words of verse 20: “They are like a dream when one awakes; when you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies”. God is telling him that following God with a pure heart and innocent hands will bear lasting fruit. And that ultimately all evil will be brought to justice. It encourages Asaph to keep climbing – he is on the right mountain!
I was reminded of the Parable of the Wise and Foolish builders in Matthew 7:24-27: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Asaph’s fourth and final handhold as he recovers from his spiritual slip and continues climbing is that he asks the Ultimate Question. Look down with me at verse 25. Asaph says “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you”.He has finally come to the realisation that the things he envied others for having are nothing compared to what he has in God. He knows that God alone can satisfy his desires. In verse 26 he goes on to say “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever”. Knowing and being with God is enough for Asaph. That’s quite a change from his previous state of mind. When he complains back in verse 13 “Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence” what he is really saying is ‘what’s the point of obeying you God if you don’t give me what I want?’. That’s often how we can treat God isn’t it? Imagine a couple who are dating. Early on in the relationship the man reveals that his family are millionaires and that he receives a generous trust fund. Their relationship becomes serious but later, as the wedding approaches, the man learns that this fund has been revoked. He tells his fiancee and she leaves him, cancelling the wedding. The man’s fiancée loved his money more than him. She was in the relationship for what she could get out of it materially rather than simply wanting to be with someone. That is how we treat God sometimes. Rather than coming to Him and obeying Him simply to be with Him because we love him we often come to get something – success or wealth perhaps. In verse 26 Asaph says “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever”. God is enough for him. God is “his portion”. And that gives him a firm foothold in life. It means that with Paul in the New Testament he can say “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” So…. Asaph is able to stop himself slipping. He grabs hold of a negative and considers those around him and he goes to the sanctuary. And there, in God’s presence he gets perspective on earthly success and injustice. And he gets an answer to the ultimate question: “Whom have I in heaven but you?”. He comes to the realisation that God is good and that He is his portion forever. Hopefully that gives us some ways to keep climbing when we are tempted to be distracted. And of course we are not alone on the climb.
I spoke earlier of my son’s love of climbing. Over the summer Frank’s grandfather made him a climbing wall from a large sheet of ply, 2x4s and colourful, blob-shaped, climbing holds. Frank climbs up and if he gets stuck or starts to lose his grip he looks back and says “Daddy?” and I reach up and lift him down. Asaph, in verse 23 says a similar thing: “Yet I am always with you (God); you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will take me into glory.” On our own spiritual climbs Jesus is with us. It’s as if he’s the lead climber and we are roped onto him. If we slip he is strong enough to take our weight at the other end of the rope and stop us falling. In the New Testament book of Hebrews 12 Jesus is described as “the pioneer…. of our faith”. Jesus has gone ahead of us and found the route and selected the hand and footholds. He knows the way to the summit and he has promised to get us there. Let’s pray.
Father, You are our God, our portion and our living bread. Please help us when we start to slip to come into your holy presence. In Jesus name, Amen
Amen