Thursday evening, November 14, 1996
"The Goodness of God to His People"
Psalm 73
By Don Garlington, Ph.D.
Psalm 73 is similar to Psalm 90, which we studied earlier this
year. Both of them have to do with the basic issues of life. Psalm
90 is concerned about the basic facts of life and death, and
Psalm 73 is concerned about the whole matter of perseverance, by
which I mean the way that one maintains one's faith in the God of
the Bible in and through his Son, Jesus Christ.
A Strange Role Model
Psalm 73 presents us with a role model which is a fairly strange
one from a certain point of view. For us, role models are usually
those people who we perceive to be as virtually perfect, or, at
least, those who are so far above us that we can say, "I
want to be like that person." From the Christian
perspective, the obvious ultimate role model is Jesus Christ
himself, the God/man, who genuinely was perfect.
But in Psalm 73 we have a different role model--a man who is
discouraged and about to fall--and it is a good thing to have such
role models also. Why? It is quite easy to despair when you look
at one who is perfect and absolute and think, "Well, I can
never be that way. Why even try?" If we see things that way,
we are losing our perspective and the cognizance of the fact that
Christ was subjected to a degree of temptation and allurement
that you and I will never experience. In fact, he understood
temptation to a degree that we can't even begin to understand,
because it was all the stronger for him. But the writer of Psalm
73 is much like us. He is a man who went through a period of
doubt and despair, and, in fact, in verse 13 he said, "If I
had said, 'I will speak thus,' I would have betrayed your
children." He was a man who was just seething with bitterness,
at least for a certain period of time.
Who Are God's People?
The whole of the psalm is really encapsulated in the first three
verses. Now, we could call this "The Goodness of God to Israel"
but it was retitled to "The Goodness of God to His
People" because we are not talking about things ethnic or
about a certain people as opposed to other people. No, we are
speaking of Israel as a paradigm, as a model, for all the people
of God. And so verse 1 translates literally, "Truly God is
good to Israel," meaning to all the people of God.
Next, the writer qualifies what he means by Israel as he goes on
to say, "to those who are pure in heart." Now we tend
to misunderstand what purity means in the Bible. When we think
about purity, we tend to think about things sensual. Thus, we say
that we are pure people if we stay away from certain sins,
especially sexual misconduct. But the term "pure"
really has to do with single-mindedness. The one who is pure in
heart is not one who is sinlessly perfect, but he is one who is
not idolatrous. And so the writer is saying that Israel is to be
defined precisely in terms of those who worship the God of Israel and
do not worship the idols of the other nations. As for you and me,
of course, that translates in terms of the idols that we find in
secular society, which could be the idols of other religions,
conceivably--the idols without--and the idols within, meaning our
own self, our own ambitions, our own agenda, and our own desires.
And so those who are pure in heart, once again, are not perfect,
but rather those who have sworn off idolatry and now embrace the
true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the conclusion that the writer arrived at after his long
ordeal of envying the wicked. In this psalm the first thing the writer
states is the last thing that he concludes, and we will trace his
progression in just a moment. In a sense, then, the bottom line
is that God is good to his people in spite of the fact that he
leads them through some very thorny ways at times. He is good to
those who embrace him as the only God and are not idolaters.
"My Feet Had Almost Slipped"
In verse 2 the writer states a principle: "But as for
me," meaning as for my experience, "my feet had almost
slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold." In a powerful
passage in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses had to upbraid Israel
for her apostasy and spoke of the way the nation would be taken
into captivity, although they would finally return. But the
problem with the people of Israel, according to Moses, is that
their foot would slide in due time (Deut. 32:35). That is the
same metaphor that we see in Psalm 73. It is the notion of
walking along and having your feet come out from under you. You
fall down, but you never get up again, so serious is the fall.
We see a similar kind of figure in terms of the stumbling block.
Several times in the gospels Jesus warned those who were tempted
not to follow him, but rather to stumble at him. He even warned
John the Baptist in such terms: "Blessed is he who doesn't
stumble over me." And so we see that the idea of stumbling,
of falling down, of your feet slipping out from under yourself,
is the idea of falling away, or apostasy.
Apostasy is taken from a Greek word that means to fall away. Now,
a person can be an apostate from any number of things. When I was
in high school, I was an apostate from the high school football
team for a little while until the coach persuaded me to come
back. Well, the one who falls away from the covenant is the one
who renounces God as Creator. When you put it in terms of a new
covenant in Christ as found in the New Testament, the one who
apostatizes or falls away from Christ is the one who finally
comes to renounce him.
Envy Leads to Misery
The writer of Psalm 73 says that he almost came to the point
where he gave up on the God of Israel. He stated his reason in verse
3, "I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the
wicked." Set that in contrast to what he says in verses 13-14.
Right in the middle of explaining what the wicked are like, he
says, "Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain
have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been
plagued; I have been punished every morning."
This psalm is a study in contrast. Suppose this man went out and
walked around the streets of Jerusalem one day. If he did so
today, he might see a Mercedes parked in one driveway, a Jaguar
in another, and maybe a Lamborghini in another. He might look in
through the windows and see the home theaters, meaning not just
this little black box that most of us have, but the big home
theater with about six speakers which makes one feel like you are
literally at the hockey game you are watching.
Suppose this man saw these things, and then went back to his
little box. He had no cable. He had no satellite hookup--just three
basic channels. He realized that what he had was very little in
contrast to what others had, which was a lot. Additionally, he
then began to evaluate their character as opposed to his own
character. He said, "I have kept my heart clean and washed
my hands in innocence," meaning "I have seen to all the
external forms of religion," the required washing of the
hands and purification rituals once you became ritually unclean.
This man had devoted himself to the service his God in every way
that was appropriate, in every way specified by the law of God.
Yet what was he saying? "All day long I have been chastened,
and things are not going well for me at all. But look at the fat
cats. Look at those who have it all, whose hearts overflow with
follies," he says. "Their eyes swell out with fatness.
They have no pangs. Their bodies are sound and sleek. They are
not in trouble like other men are," and his observations
were correct. Now, there are always exceptions and sometimes the
rich are in trouble as other people are, but among the rich it is
more the exception than it is the rule to have troubles because
they can use their money to buy whatever they need.
Reaction to the Arrogant Wicked
Then this writer observes: "How arrogant they are!" He
says, "They set their mouths against the heavens, against
heaven itself, and their tongues strut through the earth."
They are cool and breezy. Everything is in their hip pocket. Mind
you, these are fellow Jews he is speaking about. These are not
pagans in the outside world, but rather, they are members of the
very covenant community of which this man was a member himself.
And yet, he says,"Woe is me! I have kept myself clean, pure, and
innocent, and yet, every day when I get up, it is the same thing.
I am facing a whole truckload full of problems which the wicked
don't have."
If you were in that situation, how do you think you would react?
I suspect that you would react with the same kind of bitterness
that this man did. That is why I say he is a role model--perhaps
a strange one, but a role model nonetheless--because he is honest
enough to tell us what he went through so that when we have
similar experiences, we will know how to respond to them. And we
must acknowledge that we are going to go through such things,
regardless of who we are. The important thing is our reaction to
them, and that is why Psalm 73 is in the canon of Scripture. It
tells us the experience of one who went these things so that when
we do, we will know what to do, and what not to do.
The man continues in this vein for a long time. We may think that
he is protesting too much, but no, he is telling us precisely what
he thinks. In his honesty he has enough presence of mind to
clearly articulate what happens to people when they get caught in
such a maelstrom of circumstances as his.
Nevertheless. . .
As we read the psalm, what is the bottom line as far as the
wicked are concerned? At what point does this man begin to get a
grip on himself? There is a certain crucial turning point in the
psalm, and that is when he comes to the word "nevertheless"
in verse 23.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher and minister
in London in the 1930s through the 1960s, was preaching on Psalm
73 one Sunday. He came to this one word,
"nevertheless," and spent some time on it. A man came
up to him after that sermon and said that he had traveled
literally halfway around the world to hear that sermon on that
one word. Why? The turning point for a believer comes with
"nevertheless"--in spite of the wicked and their
prosperity, in spite of my problems, in spite of my
bitterness--in spite of it all.
So the writer says to his God, "I was arrogant before you. I
called them arrogant, but I was the one who was arrogant. I was like
a beast." The thing about a beast, of course, is that you
have to get its attention. I am sure you know the joke about the man
who was leading his mule down the road, when the mule went on
strike as mules are wont to do on occasion. The man couldn't get
the mule up with all the coaxing and sweet talking he could
muster. So finally he got a two by four and hit the mule over the
head as hard as he possibly could. Someone asked him why he had
treated his animal in such a harsh manner, and he said,
"Well, first of all, you've got to get his attention."
God had to get the attention of this man because he had his own
problem with arrogance even though he was not a rich man. Whether
he was of the middle class or of the poor class, we don't know,
but God got his attention through a very severe providence. And
as I say, it is going to happen to us also sooner or later.
Understanding Eschatology
What finally convinced the writer of this psalm that the wicked
ultimately are not going to maintain what they have? It is very
simple and we find it right in the text. Where does the writer
go? To the sanctuary. We don't know if he had stopped going to
the temple for a period of time, but maybe he is implying that he
had. At any rate, the writer goes up to the temple and there he
gets a lesson in what we call eschatology, the study of the last
things. Now, this is not eschatology in the sense of when the
Lord is going to return, and the relationship of his return to
the resurrection, the last judgment, and all of those things. No,
this man is thinking about the end of history. He knows that the
only thing that gives meaning to history is its consummation.
Only the end of history tells us that what we do here and now is
worth even pursuing at all.
The Destiny of the Wicked
So when this man went to the sanctuary, everything that he had
known very well for a long time suddenly came flooding in upon
him, and he saw clearly the ultimate doom of the wicked. That is
why in verse 18 he says, "Surely you place them on slippery
ground, you cast them down to ruin." Remember how this psalm
opens on the note about the writer's own feet sliding out from
under him? Well, here we see that the feet of the wicked are
going to be taken out from under them and they are going to be
swept away to that place which is reserved for those who can talk
the talk but don't walk the walk. These Jews were living within
the covenant community, and were able to offer the best of the
sacrifices, such as a bull rather than a couple of little birds,
which they did. So they talked a good game, but their feet were
going to slide.
How the wicked are destroyed in a moment! declares the psalmist.
When the floodgates of the wrath of God are opened up, they will
be swept away by terrors. He likens the wicked to a dream. You
can have a rather vivid dream, but when you wake up, eventually
you will forget about it. And so for the time being, as long as
the wicked occupy a certain amount of space in this space/time
continuum, they enjoy much. Yet one day it will all be taken away
from them. And so this man gets a grip on himself and comes to
understand that when the wicked are seen from a broader
perspective, what they have now is literally here today and gone
tomorrow.
God Is Our True Treasure
Perhaps the most famous words of the psalm are in verses 25 and
26: "Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I
desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is
the strength of my heart and my portion forever." The writer
speaks here in absolute terms when really he has a relative kind
of thing in mind. Frequently in the Hebrew Old Testament if the
writer wanted to emphasize a point, instead of speaking in the
relative terms that are reality, he used an absolute.
So when the psalmist says, "Whom have I in heaven but
you?" he is not denying that other beings and other
creatures exist in heaven, but for all practical purposes they
might as well not exist in relation to the God who himself fills
the heavens. And when he says, "And earth has nothing I
desire besides you," again, he is speaking in relative
terms, because we do desire companionship and the things that for
us make life worth living, and there is nothing wrong with that
in itself. But in comparison with the God who must be worshiped
to the exclusion of all idols, there might as well not be
anything or anyone upon the earth besides him that we desire.
The Failure of Heart and Flesh
Then we read, "My flesh and my heart may fail," and,
indeed, they do. It seems like only a few days ago that I was
sitting in college listening to professors who were telling me
that it was just yesterday that they were sitting where I was
sitting. We see the signs of aging daily. When I look at pictures
of my parents when they were young, I notice that my mother was
quite a lovely young woman and my dad was a fairly strikingly
handsome young man. In her later years, however, my mother had Alzheimer's
disease, and I saw her fade and waste away from that. She finally
reached a point where she didn't recognize who I or my wife was,
and although she could remember things that happened maybe fifty
and sixty years ago, she could not recollect the events of the
past five seconds. My father finally died of cancer, but he also
had rheumatoid arthritis, which gnarled his once young, strong
hands beyond remedy.
Our flesh and heart will fail, and we will go from being young,
healthy, attractive, and strong to a point where all of those things
are gone. There are some who simply cannot bear the transition
from youth into old age, and they are the ones who find
themselves with their feet slipping out from under them. They
become bitter and disillusioned, saying, "This is all so disappointing.
I was looking for something else and I didn't get it." As I
said at the beginning, if you haven't been through such an
experience as this, you will go through it. And what is so
vitally important is that we know how to react, and that is why
this very psalm was written.
The Balanced View
This psalm informs us that we have to have a balanced view of
life. Now, there are basically two views of life that you find on
opposite extremes. There is what we might call the "health
and wealth" gospel, which is still very much with us, especially
on college campuses. There we often find a form of evangelism
that says, "If you just give your heart to Jesus, everything
is going to be great from that point on. You will have a
beautiful wife (or a handsome husband). You will get the job that
you really desire. You will rise to the top of your profession.
You will have the home and family you want. You will really have
it all." That view is very sincerely and seriously intended
in many forms of campus evangelism.
On the other hand you have what you might call the "sour
grapes" view of life, which is propounded by religious
people as well. Remember Aesop's fable about the fox that jumped
again and again after the grapes? When he failed to reach them,
he said, "Oh, well, I guess they were sour anyhow," and
went on his way. And so, according to this view, we are told that
we are not supposed to have a good time, and so we might as well
redefine a good time as a bad time because we are not supposed to
have a good time.
Now those extremes are dashed upon the rock of Psalm 73. In fact,
they are dashed upon the rock of the whole of Scripture. All
things are ours to be enjoyed, says the apostle Paul. But he also
writes in the same context, "We brought nothing into the world,
and we can take nothing out it. But if we have food and clothing,
we will be content with that," meaning we are content with
necessities if God so chooses to provide us only with necessities
(1 Tim. 6:7-8). This is the principle of abounding or being
abased, as Paul puts it in Philippians 4. And in Psalm 73 we find
the key term, again, at the transitional point of Psalm 73:
"Nevertheless, I am continually with thee, and you are with
me" (v. 23, paraphrase). The man went through a period of
time where he didn't believe that God was with him. He seemed to
be utterly abandoned. "Yet," he says, "I am always
with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your
counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory" (vv.
23-24).
We Have A Choice
You see, we find ourselves always in the same position that Adam
was in the garden of Eden. Adam had two alternatives placed
before him as to the nature of reality. There was God's
interpretation of reality, and then there was Satan's interpretation
of reality. Satan asked Adam, "Has God truly spoken? Has God
really been up front with you and told you the truth?" So
Adam was faced with a choice. The only recourse he had was to
believe one word, one interpretation of reality, as opposed to
another interpretation. We know which he chose.
You and I are qualitatively in the same situation. There is the
fat cat gospel and the sour grapes gospel, which represent both
extremes. And then there is simply the religion of
scientific-secularism, which we also find on university campuses.
In fact, a student recently told me that one of his courses began
simply with a statement that there is no God, and went on from there.
We are, therefore, presented with alternatives, and as it was
with Adam, we can either believe the word which is spoken by God
the Creator or believe the alternative explanations. Those who
believe the alternative explanations are those whose feet slide
out from under them. They apostatize and fall away. But those in
whom is the root of the matter are those who may come perilously
close to the precipice, that their feet are ready to slide, and
yet they don't slide because they get a grip on themselves. And
with the reflex action of faith they say with the psalmist,
"It is dark for the time being, and I don't know where I am
going. I am not even sure perhaps that I am continually with God
and that he is holding my right hand." And yet perseverance--which
is the name of the game in this psalm, and in life, period--does
indeed lay hold of us when we consider the end of all things.
Stand Firm in God
In the second chapter of the book of Revelation we find the
letter written to the church at Smyrna. Smyrna was a very prosperous
city in the ancient world. It was a very pleasant place to live
according to the descriptions we have of it. It was reputed to
have a great athletic stadium and was a very "arts and
croissant" type of place. Yet Smyrna was a very anti-Christian
place, both from the religious and secular points of view. The
Jews in Smyrna were very much opposed to anything that was
Christian, as were the secular Roman authorities because
Christianity was not perceived to be a part of Judaism, which was
a sanctioned religion.
In speaking to the members of the church of Smyrna Jesus Christ
says that the devil was going to put some of them in jail for a
while. Then he says, "Do not be afraid of what you are about
to suffer" (v. 10). In other words, he was warning them that some
were going to be thrown into prison and wait there until they
died. Others would be paraded into the arena to face some very
hungry lions and men with swords, and possibly be killed or
devoured. But Jesus says, "Do not be afraid." In what
sense can he really mean that? If you knew that you were going to
be killed with a sword, or mauled to death and your flesh eaten
by big hungry cats, wouldn't you be afraid? I know I would be.
But again, the reference is to the last day, because within that
setting, fear has to do with the second death. Jesus says that
those who hold out to the end will not be hurt by the second
death.
It is the same in Psalm 73. I am not proposing that you will have
gloom, doom, frustration, disappointment and trouble for the rest
of your days. Yet I believe that we will all go through Psalm 73
experiences, and when we do, we have to think in terms of the
end, of the last day. Why? It is that which provides the frame
for being able to locate everything within the scope and the
compass of reality.
Psalm 73 has certainly become one of my favorite psalms in recent
years. Only recently have I even dared even to speak from the
psalms, because I think one has to have a certain amount of
experience built up before one can do a very responsible job. But
when we begin to immerse ourselves in such passages as these, we
will begin to see our circumstances in light of the transcript of
this man's experience--this man who came from bitterness and
despair--and we will conclude with him that God is good to his
people, to those who are pure in heart, to his Israel.
