A Psalm of Lament audio (5MB)
Psalm 73
Today we start a short series on the Psalms – culminating in our evening worship service with Sons of Korah on May 26th. Over the next 3 weeks we’ll be looking at 4 different types of psalm – today a psalm of lament, next week a psalm of yearning, then a psalm of hope and on that Sunday evening a psalm of praise.
Before we begin it’s important to understand that psalms are first and foremost poetry. Poetry is a great medium for expressing feelings. The words that are used are not always exact, nor are they meant to be heard literally. Rather they’re meant to evoke a response of the heart. They often appeal to the emotions rather than the intellect. That makes them particularly helpful for people who are struggling with life, who perhaps don’t have the energy to think things through rationally or who are too unsettled to think calmly. These people can join with the psalmist in pouring their heart out to the Lord. Psalms are also good when you’re so full of joy that you can’t put it into words. That’s when the psalmist calls on the mountains and trees to sing their praises along with his own.
Well, today we’re looking at Psalm 73, a lament.
The psalm begins with a familiar refrain: “God is good to those who love him.” That’s one of the foundations of our understanding of God, isn’t it? God is good. God loves us. God has chosen us. He’ll never forsake us. He’ll look after us. What’s more he’ll bless those who remain faithful to him with every good gift. And so the psalmist believes.
But wait a minute – that’s not how it looks in the real world. As he looks around him he realises that the reality of his world is at odds with what he’s been taught, with what he believes. In fact the discord is so great that it almost trips him up. He looks around and who is it that he sees apparently receiving the blessing of God? It isn’t the godly. It’s the arrogant, the wicked.
He’s probably been to the hairdresser or the dentist and picked up a back copy of New Idea or Who Weekly and what does he see: pictures of the beautiful people, sunning themselves in the Bahamas or the Riviera, with their sleek, sun-tanned bodies, glowing with health, driving the latest sports car. And with the pictures are the gossip columnists’ stories of people leaving one partner to join up with another, fighting among themselves, driving under the influence, overindulging in various ways; but mostly just rich people taking self-care to the point of indulgence.
And then he realises that these people aren’t just well-off by chance or good luck. No, they’re skilful at self-interest. What’s more, they have no shame about it. In fact they boast about it. What’s more their prosperity, he sees, is based on violence (6) & oppression (8).
So what does he think to himself? “How come I don’t have that sort of life?” He envies their success. He wants what they’ve got.
Does that thought ever cross your mind when you see the A-list people strutting down the red carpet? Appearing in the sponsors marquees at the races or the Grand Prix? Why doesn’t God bless me like that?
Then he notices that it isn’t just their prosperity. He says “4they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. 5They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people.”
What do you think when you see someone who’s been faithful to God all their life and they’re struck down by illness – or one of their loved ones gets sick and even dies? Do you ask God “Why?” Why them? Why me? It’s a legitimate question isn’t it? God promises to look after us, yet sometimes he lets us get sick and even die. In other cases he lets us grow old to the point where we suffer from dementia and he doesn’t let us die!
We sang a song a couple of weeks ago where there’s a refrain: “Consider it joy, pure joy, when troubles come” and someone commented that when you’re experiencing some troubles it’s impossible to think of joy. There are times when all you experience is sadness and grief.
That’s where the psalmist is as he looks at his life and that of those around him.
It’s so unjust! These people treat God with total disrespect - even scorn (11). They laugh at God because he seems so ineffective. But what makes it worse is that their approach works! “12Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.”
And what about the righteous? As for me, he says: “13All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. 14For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.” What’s the point? Am I being foolish maintaining my faith in God when all I experience is suffering? Where’s the quid pro quo?
Or, perhaps the problem is that this religion is outdated – not suited to this modern world. Is pragmatism better than faithfulness? Should I forget ethics and join the winners?
Perhaps you’ve thought that as well. Life would be much simpler if you could forget God. You could sleep in even longer on Sundays. You could spend the morning reading the paper in your favourite coffee shop the way so many other people do. Come Monday you could wheel and deal, tell lies, manipulate people, until you too succeeded in getting rich.
But hang on! What would that do to you? At that moment he stops and thinks about his life a bit more deeply. He asks himself, “But how shall I live when I’m part of the circle of God’s people? (15)” Here’s the crux of his and our dilemma. Whether to abandon the community of faith and follow the ungodly but prosperous majority or stick with God’s people? He realises that there’s a priceless value in being part of the people of God that overrides the success of the ungodly.
In fact it’s when he comes back to the worshipping community that his confusion begins to sort itself out. He says “Until I went into the sanctuary of God.” There in the house of God his disorientation begins to turn to reorientation.
So what is it about God’s sanctuary that refocusses his mind?
Is it the awareness of God’s presence; the sense that God is there on the other side of the curtain – there but not accessible because of his holiness? Is it the reminder that God is a just God who can’t bear the presence of evil, that in the end all evil will be done away with. That must be part of it.
Coming into God’s presence often helps us readjust to the true reality of the world; i.e. to see the world as it really is, not as we in our weakness might perceive it to be. Not that coming into God’s presence reveals anything new. Rather it reaffirms what we already know about God and our place in his world. One of the things the great cathedral architects tried to do was to give us a sense of the greatness of God and our insignificance by comparison. So when you go to a cathedral like the one in Salisbury, England, you feel totally dwarfed by the grandeur of its arches and domes.
As he stands in the sanctuary he suddenly realises the emptiness of the hope offered by the pragmatic approach – it’s a short term gain with a long term consequence. It’s a slippery slope leading to a fall to ruin. The crash will come without warning. His envy of these people, the rewards they offer, he says, are like a dream or a nightmare that flees at waking. He’s suddenly woken up to the big picture of life on this earth. He realises where these dreams have led him.
He says “I was stupid & ignorant (22) like a brute beast toward you” (literally ‘with you’ by the way). That is he was like a donkey braying loudly against the world, ranting illogically against God and his purposes, as though he knew better than God what was good for him.
But again, his presence in the sanctuary gives him a renewed insight.
He says, in fact I have always “been with you” – in fact you hold my right hand.
Coming into the sanctuary revealed 2 things to God’s people. First it reminded them that God is Lord of lords and King of Kings – wholly unapproachable, hidden behind a curtain that only the high priest could enter and then only once a year.
Yet at the same time here was God dwelling in their midst. God was unapproachable in light, yet he’d come near, made them his people. He’d taken them by the right hand and led them to this place.
For us of course that truth is even more clear. God has not just come into our midst; he’s appeared as one of us, in human flesh. What do we find when we come together to worship – particularly when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper? We’re reminded once again that God loved us so much that he came in human form to give himself up for us. Jesus suffered with us; he experienced the sorts of temptations that we experience; he knows what it’s like to live in a world full of suffering and hardship because he’s lived among us; he suffered and died at the hands of evil men and women.
The psalmist doesn’t know what we know but he does realise that far from God being absent or unaware as the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, God is there with them all the time, holding their hand. This time, though, the ‘with you’ doesn’t come from the speaker but from God – this has been God’s initiative all along. In contrast to the wicked, who turn their back on God, who ignore him altogether – the righteous receive God’s presence as a gift.
God’s holding our hand implies his support, both emotional & practical; it implies an identification with us that enables us to withstand the suffering we’re going through – he guides us with his counsel and promises to receive us in heaven when our earthly race is finished.
I’m reminded of what we read a couple of weeks ago in Ephesians 6 where we’re told to stand firm, to resist the efforts of Satan to turn us aside. How are we going to do that? By using the defences that God provides us with; by standing in his strength.
Does that mean we’ll always be happy? That nothing will go wrong in our lives? Clearly not! We’re just as likely to suffer pain and loss in this world as anyone else. We’re less likely to prosper in a world where things are biased towards the wicked and ungodly.
But what are we to do if that’s what we find. What path are we to choose?
The psalmist’s conclusion is expressed as a question and an answer: “25Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.” Compared to God the rewards of this world fade into insignificance. There was a moment in Jesus’ ministry when people began to drift away because what he was teaching them was too hard to deal with. So he asked his disciples whether they too would like to leave him. It was Peter who answered for all of them: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)
Like the psalmist we’re faced with a choice – do we go with the successful crowd or do we stick with Jesus Christ – the one who has the words of eternal life? Is success in this fleeting life worth the loss of life with God in the world to come?
He finishes with a resounding cry of confidence in God: “26My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Notice, there’s no sense of triumphalism here. He still struggles with his lot. His flesh & heart are failing. He’s saying “My suffering is too great to bear.” Yet he knows that God is there with him, holding him up and assuring him of security forever and that gives him sufficient comfort to carry on. I think that’s something we need to keep in our minds. For some things there will never be enough comfort to take away the hurt, the pain. What we need in that situation is to find sufficient comfort to stand firm.
“For me”, he says, and I hope this is true for us as well: “28But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, to tell of all your works.”
May God be your refuge and comforter in times of pain and struggle as we wait for Jesus’ return to renew creation!
