Sermon: Finding Stability Amid Life’s Confusion

Sermon: Finding Stability Amid Life’s Confusion

Scripture: Psalms 73:1-28, “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.”

“Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. And they say, "How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?"

“Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I had said, "I will speak thus, "I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.

Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.”

Introduction: Psalm 73 is the beginning of the third division of the five divisions of Psalms. Psalms 73-89 are what many consider the darkest division of the five divisions of Psalms. Psalm 73 is a Wisdom Psalm that engages themes like those found in Ecclesiastes and Job. Asaph, who wrote Psalm 73, confesses that seeing prosperity among wicked people brought him bitterness and envy. That nearly caused him to lose trust in God. Carefully considering God and His eternal truth led Asaph to a stronger faith. Asaph, King David’s Psalmist, Singer and Seer, served both King David and King Solomon fulfilled his role of composing the music, leading the worship and ushering the people into God’s presence.

Asaph, the author of Psalm 73, was confused about the way the world worked. He saw righteous people suffering while wicked people flourished. He admitted he was tempted to live like the wicked, until he went into the sanctuary of God and found answers. God would eventually vindicate the righteous and punish the evildoers. There was no future in wickedness, but there was a glorious future for those who loved God.

Asaph verbalize a question that many righteous people wanted to ask, “Why God allows the rich to flourish while the righteous often suffer?” Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? Why does it rain on good and evil, the just and the unjust? Asaph decided to seek God. In seeking God, we will find stability amid life’s confusion.

1. Believers must resist the temptation to live like the world. 73:1-14):

Asaph, the psalmist, documented how he was tempted to live like the wicked men he saw around him. He said he was very close to slipping off the edge into their immorality because, on the surface, their lives seemed so good and pleasant. “For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (73:3). These immoral men were well fed and fat with abundance. They didn’t seem to struggle through daily trials like other men. They seem to live without pain up to their death. They wore pride as a necklace, violence as their clothing, and their hearts overflowed with sin, but the consequences of their actions never seemed to catch up with them. Their evil was out in the open for everyone to see, and it caused righteous people to question God. “Why would God allow the world to be this way?”