“The Goodness of God to His People”

Psalm 73
Don Garlington | Thursday, November 14, 1996
Copyright © 1996, Don Garlington

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.