Have you ever found yourself thinking – I wish I had what my non-Christian friends have? I wish I had the freedom they have. I wish I was able to do the things that they do without conscience getting in the way. I wish I could get up to what they get up to without feeling guilty.
After all, nothing ever seems to happen to them. I know just as many friends from church who have lost loved ones or been diagnosed with cancer as non-Christians. Why am I bothering?
Or if you’re someone who doesn’t call themselves a Christian, the question can be reversed. When I look a the successes, the failures, the rich, the poor, the healthy, the sick throughout our community – what is the point of following God?
` I’ll admit I’ve asked that question myself. I did fairly well at my HSC, did well at university and am now teaching Christian studies at a public high school for a salary $20000 less than a normal teacher would get, let alone what I would get if I had joined the business or legal world like my father before me. I think about the fact that because of my choices to minister the gospel I’ll probably never be able to buy a house anywhere near where I’ve always lived. I don’t say that to try to big note any sacrifice I’ve made – I’m not saying I’m living in poverty – but just to show that this is a common question: do we follow God in vain?
That’s the question Asaph, the writer of this psalm is asking.
He was a faithful Jewish man – a man who genuinely followed God – but one day he found himself not just asking that question but going the next step: seriously doubting the worth of it all. PS 73:2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
PS 73:3 For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Sometimes it seems the most natural thing in the world to be envious of other people. After all, that’s what’s advertising is all about. We see something that other people have and say to ourselves “I want that”. For Asaph, it’s their wealth, their health, their freedom, even their arrogance before God. And he sees them get away with it, so he says in vs 13:
PS 73:13 Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.
PS 73:14 All day long I have been plagued;
I have been punished every morning.
He reminds me a bit of Job. Job had everything – but then everything is taken away from him: his home, family, possessions, his health. He’s plagued by every ailment. And his wife tells him that he should just curse God and die, because there’s no point to being pure any longer. Look where it’s got you, she says. Have you gained anything? Just give away this faith of yours.
Asaph seems to be going through the same sort of thing. He’s seriously tempted to give it all away. He tries to understand it all, but he can’t. It’s oppressive to him.
You know when you’re trying to understand that elusive maths problem, or that complex theological idea or, if you’re like me, the exact way that new bit of furniture you just bought should be put together – and you wrack your brains but you just can’t get it. Asaph can’t get it, either.
But then there’s a moment for him. For me, that’s the moment I decide to embrace my feelings of inadequacy and read the instruction booklet. There’s a moment when it just clicks. Vs 16-17:
PS 73:16 When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me
PS 73:17 till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.
Notice where he is when he gets this revelation. He’s in the sanctuary of God. And what I think that suggests is that we can’t understand these things on our own. We need God to show us.
What Asaph understands is this – he realizes the finally destiny of these wicked men, these people he has envied so much. And when he realizes this, he doesn’t envy them anymore.
Just over a year ago, Kerry Packer died. You’ve probably all heard of him. Richest man in Australia, he was. When he died there were memorial services, TV specials, an outpouring of praise for this “Great Australian”. Now I’m not going to compare Packer to an Adolf Hitler, but he was like many ultra-rich people – he did what he needed to to get to the top and stay there. He never paid his fair share of tax. He smoked and drank heavily. He had a foul mouth and a violent temper. His biographer Paul Barry said “his god was money and he worshipped devoutly” He had been ill on and off for some time. Several years ago he had a serious health scare where his heart stopped for several minutes before he was resuscitated. And when he had recovered he spoke to the media and said “when I died there was nothing there. There is no God, and there is no heaven.” This is what he said, word for word, in answer to a question: “I’ve been to the other side, and let me tell you son: there’s nothing ***** there!”
The wicked in Psalm 73 are people who oppress the poor and scoff at God. “How can God know”, they say. “Does the Most High have knowledge?” And yet people fawn all over them, like the media did when Packer died.
Asaph finds out what will really happen to people like that. They are on a slippery slope, they are going to be swept away to destruction.
The trouble, for them at least, is that they have a false hope and a false assurance. The world thinks they’ve got it all. They think they’ve got it all. But they’re living a lie and they’ve been sold a lie.
There was an explosion at a mine in West Virginia in the United States in December of 2005. More than a dozen miners were trapped underground, battling against time as the air became more and more toxic. They had been down there for almost two days, and many of their relatives had gathered together in Sago Baptist Church in the nearby town of Tallmansville. Suddenly, they received the call they had been waiting for. Their men were alive. A local parishioner ran upstairs and started ringing the church bells. There was dancing and hugging and crying. The Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin, yelled to the assembled media that they could now “believe in miracles”. Against the odds, something amazing had happened. They thought there was no hope, but now the message had come through – they’re alive! “Charlotte Weaver, wife of Jack Weaver one of the trapped miners, said “Miracles happen in West Virginia and today we got one. I got scared a lot of times but I couldn’t give up. We have an eleven year old son and I couldn’t go home and tell him that Daddy wasn’t coming home. This is a miracle.”
Pause
Three hours later another call came in from the mine. Due to a miscommunication between rescuers and the mining company, a mistake had been made. The twelve miners had all been found, that part was correct. But all except one were dead. The families were hysterical, they were distraught, they were angry. It had been a false hope and a false belief.
Those who blindly assume they are on God’s good side without ever meeting him on his terms not ours are in for a terrible, tragic surprise, a shattering of hope just like those gathered at Sago Baptist Church. That’s what is says in vs 19 – “how suddenly are they destroyed”. That can be this side of death, but most often that destruction is into eternity.
That’s what Asaph found. That the confidence, the arrogance, the hope, the beliefs of the wicked were all misplaced. He found that he had nothing to be envious about.
I think it all comes down to taking an eternal perspective on life. If we only look at the short term then sure, it looks as if those who ignore God get off scott free. But when you look at it from the perspective of heaven and hell and forever then you get a very different picture.
In all of the Psalms, in all of the bible in fact, there are two main over-riding, all-encompassing reasons for loving and honouring and following the God of the universe. And they’re both captured in this Psalm, which is one of the reasons I chose to look at it this morning. These two reasons are like two sides of the same coin. Many people seem to think they don’t go together, but they in fact fit perfectly.
. We’ve looked at the first of them already this morning. The two reasons are these:
1. We should follow the LORD because he is huge and powerful and will destroy us if we don’t.
2. We should follow the LORD because he is loving and compassionate and will forgive and protect and bless those who come to him for refuge.
We see this second reason so clearly as Asaph tells of his return to the LORD.
PS 73:21 When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
PS 73:22 I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.
Like David in Psalm 51 after he committed adultery and murder where God’s chosen sin describes himself as sinful since birth and mired in iniquity, Asaph doesn’t have a very high opinion of himself! But despite what he is like, God still guides him, counsels him, comforts him. He’s lacked faith, but God has not abandoned him.
And then he writes those great words of vs 25-26. You would do well to remember them.
PS 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
PS 73:26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
If I got home this morning to find that my house had burnt down and all my uninsured property had been destroyed. If my job was gone, if my friends all despised me, if my family had all passed away, if I was forced to live on the streets and was slowly wasting away from a terrible disease – if all that was happening to me I would still have more than those wicked people who seem to have it all. If all that was happening to me, I would still have more than Kerry Packer ever had. Because I would have God. I would have heaven. Everything else may fail and die but none of it matters because the LORD is my inheritance, my portion forever.
What a message, what a comfort.
From the Psalms we know that those who ignore God and scoff at him will be destroyed. They are fools for even thinking they can take on the creator of the universe. But on the other side of that coin we also know that through the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ there is forgiveness and blessing for those who turn back to God. Whatever you’ve done, whatever you are – whether it’s adultery and murder like David, whether it’s ignorance and faithlessness like Asaph, or whether it’s the millions of other things you’ve thought, said, done or not done that you know in your heart. Whatever it is, know this – there is forgiveness
God wants to be gracious to us. But often people get angry when they hear about it. When I’m teaching students about grace, about this unmerited, undeserved gift of God, many of them get angry. I tell them that forgiveness is a free gift from God available to all and they get angry because they say some people, never themselves, don’t deserve to be forgiven, they should go to hell. One girl asked me the other day, “did Hitler go to heaven” and I said to her, “I don’t know. He could have turned back to God before he died and God would have forgiven him if he had trusted in Jesus.” And she almost spat at me. “Someone like that could never for forgiven.” I thought when I went to the school that they wouldn’t like the teaching of judgement and hell – and they don’t like that. But I find that they hate the teaching of grace almost more. Because it says to us, God’s not interested in your performance. It is so pathetic it doesn’t matter. I was speaking an older gentlemen once about forgiveness, and he said to me “James, I don’t want forgiveness. I want God to judge me on my own merits.” And he is a good bloke. But I had to say to him “If God judges you on your own merits, you’re going straight to hell.” And that’s true of all of us. But God doesn’t want to do that. He loves to forgive. He doesn’t care how bad you’ve been.
I’ve got a whole list here of extraordinary men who have done horrific things. Ted Bundy raped and murdered 27 American women – that’s a whole classroom full. He tells us that, having been visited over 200 times by a Christian solicitor and his wife, he had put his trust in Jesus and been forgiven. So when he was put in the electric chair, Ted Bundy’s gone to heaven. John Wesley Dodds specialized in raping and murdered children. A woman who was there to witness his execution came out very shaken and told everyone that just before he was strapped up and put to death, he turned to the window and said, "I want you to know that there is hope and there is forgiveness and they’re both found in Jesus Christ." His lawyer who wasn’t a Christian was also interviewed and said that Dodds believed he had been forgiven and was going from the chair to heaven. Jeffrey Darmer murdered 17 people. When the police arrested him there were 11 corpses or parts of corpses in his flat. He ate his way through parts of six of the bodies. Before he was murdered in prison, he publicly said he had become a Christian, he had repented, was profoundly sorry for what he had done, and he was very active in the prison ministry. He was publicly baptized. His soul was cleansed, his sins washed away. His future was secure. What do you make of that? Do you like that? Is it possible that a cannibal like Jeffrey Darmer can go to heaven? Absolutely. Absolutely.
One of the very few men we know for sure has done to heaven is the thief who died on the cross next to Jesus. Last minute turned back. We hate that, don’t we? We hate the idea that someone who hurts little children can go to heaven. We hate that because we think we’re better than them and because in our hearts we’re all thinking we should be good enough for God.
There’s two things you need to know about yourself and about people generally:
1. Nobody is above God’s judgment: nobody is outside of God’s reach, nobody is too rich or too powerful to be called to account by the LORD. No one can escape the piercing gaze of God that sees into your very soul. Nobody is above God’s judgment.
and
2. Nobody is below God’s grace
God is well able to forgive a cannibal. He’s well able to forgive someone who has murdered 27 women. And he’s well able to forgive me and he loves to forgive you.
Well today I started with a question – what is the point of following God? You might have been a Christian for as long as you remember or you might be encountering the claims of God on your life for the first time. And you might be pondering – is it worth being a Christian? I hope Psalm 73 as gone a little bit of the way to answering that. We saw that we can’t escape God’s justice. While the men and women of the world may seem to get away with it as they live their lives lusting after money, power and each other, we know that’s an illusion. We know there will be a reckoning. But we also know there is forgiveness and great blessing to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Compared to that, nothing comes close. Let me close with the words of Asaph in Psalm 73:
PS 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
PS 73:26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
