1 Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart.
2 But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped.
3 For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
4 For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm.
5 They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.
6 Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.
7 Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish.
8 They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily.
9 They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth.
10 Therefore his people return hither: and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them.
11 And they say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?
12 Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.
13 Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.
14 For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.
15 If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children.
16 When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me;
17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.
18 Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.
19 How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors.
20 As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.
21 Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins.
22 So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee.
23 Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand.
24 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
27 For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee.
28 But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.
Introduction
The great value of the book of Psalms is that in it, we have godly men stating their experiences and giving us an account of the things that happened to them in their spiritual life. Throughout history, the book of Psalms has therefore been a book of great value for God’s people. Again and again it provides us with the kind of comfort and teaching we need, and insight we can find nowhere else.
One of the remarkable things about the Psalms is the way the experiences of these people parallel our own. They struggle with the same issues, ask the same questions, and feel the same emotions as we do. It is with a remarkable honesty that these men do not hesitate to tell the truth about themselves. We have a great classic example of that in the 73rd Psalm.
The writer of Psalm 73 admits very freely that he had almost lost his faith. His feet were almost gone, and his steps had well-nigh slipped (verse 2). He goes on to say that he was like the beast before God, so foolish and so ignorant (verse 22). What honesty! That is one of the great values of the Psalms. I know of nothing in the spiritual life more discouraging than to meet the kind of person who seems to give the impression that he or she is always walking on the mountaintop. That they live in continual sunshine. That everything is smiles and roses with them. That is certainly not true in the Bible. The Bible tells us that these men knew what it was to be cast down and to be in sore and grievous trouble. If you are never cast down, perplexed, or discouraged, then you have nothing in common with the Bible writers. They were all fallible creatures like the rest of us who struggle with life and its great issues.
The psalmist begins this experience in a most remarkable way. He begins with his conclusion. It is a great triumphant note: “Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart.” It is as if he says, “Now I am going to tell you a story; I am going to tell you what happened to me; but the thing I want to leave with you is just this—the goodness of God.”
We sometimes sing the chorus: “God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, he’s so good to me.” That’s the message of this psalm. God never varies. There is no limitation at all; there are no qualifications. God is always good to his people.
This man has had an experience. He went right through it, is grateful to have reached this point, and then proceeds to tell us how he got there. This is a good way of teaching, and it is always the method of the Psalms.
We should all realize this big point that he is making, namely, that God is always good to his people—to those who are of a clean heart. That is the proposition, but the thing that will engage us as we study the Psalms in particular is the way by which this man arrives at that conclusion. What he has to tell us can be summed up like this: he started from this proposition in his religious experience; then he went astray; then he came back again.
Thanks to the psalmists who analyze such experiences, we find the Psalms to be of such great value. We all know something about this kind of experience in our own lives. We start out in the right place; then something goes wrong, and we seem somehow to be losing everything.
Our problem is figuring out how to get back in the right place again. This man shows us how he arrives back at the place where the soul finds its true poise. He tells us about a particular experience that he had passed through. He tells us that he was very badly shaken, and that he had very nearly fallen. What was the cause of his trouble? It was simply that he did not quite understand God’s ways with respect to himself. He had become aware of a painful fact.
He was living a godly life; he was cleaning his heart and washing his hands in innocence. He was avoiding sin; he was meditating upon the things of God; he was spending his time in prayer to God; he was in the habit of examining his life, and whenever he found sin, he confessed it to God with sorrow and he sought forgiveness and renewal. The man was devoting himself to a life that would be well-pleasing in God’s sight. He kept clear of the world and its polluting effects; he separated himself from evil ways and gave himself up to the living of this godly life. Yet although he was doing all of this, he was having a great deal of trouble. He cried, “All the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.” He was having a very difficult time. He does not tell us exactly what was happening; it may have been illness, sickness, trouble in his family, economic reversals, or difficulty with his children. Whatever it was, it was very grievous and hurtful, and he was being tested and tried very sorely. In fact everything seemed to be going wrong, and nothing seemed to be going right.
Now that was bad enough in itself, but that was not thing that really troubled and distressed him. The real trouble was that when he looked at the ungodly, he saw a striking contrast. They prospered in the world, they increased in riches, there were no bands in their death, their strength was firm, and they were not troubled as other men. He describes their arrogance, deceitfulness, and their blasphemy. He gives us the most perfect picture in all of literature of the so-called “successful” men of the world. He even describes this type of man’s posture: his arrogant appearance, with his eyes standing out with fatness, and his pride encompassing him as a chain.
This is what caused this man his pain and his trouble. He believed God to be holy and righteous and true—one who intervenes on behalf of his people and surrounds them with loving care and wonderful promise. His problem was figuring out how to reconcile all of this with what was happening to himself, and still more, with what was happening to the ungodly. This psalm is a classic statement of this particular problem—God’s way with respect to man, and especially God’s way with respect to his own people. That was the thing that most perplexed this psalmist as he contrasted his own lot with that of the wicked. He tells us his reaction to it all.
There are those who give the impression that they think the ways of God are always perfectly plain and clear. They always seem to be able to reason this way; the sky to them is always bright and shiny; and they themselves are also perfectly happy. Well, all I can say is that they are absolutely superior to the apostle Paul, for he tells us in 2 Corinthians 4 that he was “perplexed, but not in despair.”
This is a very dangerous position to be in. His feet were almost gone. His steps were almost slipped. He had almost lost his faith. He tells us that he had become envious of the foolish and the arrogant. They were getting along fine. They were not troubled like other men, and he secretly longed to be like them. Satan and temptation can have a blinding effect on us. Under his influence and power we may do things that in our normal condition would be quite unthinkable of us. Don’t ever forget the subtlety of Satan. He comes as a would-be friend and plants doubts in our minds. He cunningly asked this psalmist, “Don’t you think you are cleansing your heart in vain, and washing your hands in innocence?” The psalmist began to feel that he was wasting his time and that it was useless trying to serve God. He had come to think that it did not pay to serve Jesus.
Look at the apparent logic. Sin and temptation often appear that way. “After all,” it makes the psalmist say, “I’m living a godly life, and this is what happens to me. Those other men are blaspheming God, and with lofty utterances are saying things that should never be thought, let alone said. Yet they are very prosperous; their children are doing well; they have more than the heart could wish. Meanwhile, I am suffering the exact opposite.” There is only one conclusion to draw. Looking at it from the natural human point of view, the case seems to be unreasonable.
That is always a characteristic of temptation. No man would ever fall to temptation if it were not. It is plausible, powerful, strong, and logical. Oftentimes, it is apparently an unanswerable case. Let me make it very clear that it is no sin to be tempted.
However, temptation is a very dangerous place, and from it, a person can fall very hard. He is at the point of blaspheming God. He is tempted to say things and the only thing that restrains him is he is afraid he will influence somebody else. Some of you may be passing through this kind of experience at the moment. Things may be going wrong with you, and blow upon blow may be descending upon you. You have been living the Christian life, reading your Bible, working for God, and yet the blows have come, one on top of the other. Everything seems to be going wrong; you have been plagued all day long and chastened every morning. One trouble follows hard after another, and to make matters worse, the unrighteous seem to be getting along fine.
You are discouraged. You are wondering if it pays to serve Jesus. You’ve questioned if there is any use in seeking to live right at all. Have you come to the place where you can say that God is always good to his people—that there is no exception, and there are no qualifications? God is always good without reservation and without hesitation.
Let’s be fair to ourselves and fair to God. The promise of God is great and all-inclusive, but it also is conditional. It is to them that are of a clean heart. In other words, if you and I are sinning against God, then God will have to deal with us and it is going to be painful. But even when God chastens us, it is still good to us. It is because we are his children.
I sometimes think that the very essence of the whole Christian position and the secret of a successful spiritual life is just to realize two things. They are found in these first two verses: “Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped.” In other words, “Number one, I must have complete, absolute confidence in God; number two, I must have no confidence in myself.”
Here is a man suddenly tempted—tempted to say something, or if you like, tempted to do something. The force of the temptation is so great that he is almost thrown off-balance. He is at the point of falling into temptation, and he tells us what it was that saved him. What was it that saved the psalmist? He was about to slip until he went into the sanctuary of God. “Then understood I their end,” he says.
When a man went into the tabernacle or the temple of God, he entered into the presence of God. When the people under the old dispensation went to the Temple, they went there to meet God. It was the place in which God’s honor dwelt. It was the place where his glory was present. This man was certainly entering into the presence of God. He was unhappy, perplexed, and had an awful problem until he went into the sanctuary of God. Then everything became clear to him. He was put right and began to climb out of his despair and reach the point where he could say, “God is always good to his people—without exception.”
There is a vital lesson for us here: it is an absolute necessity in the Christian life to be able to think spiritually. The whole trouble with the psalmist (and with us) is that we will often approach our problems solely in terms of our own thoughts and our own understanding. We see things only from the earthly human standpoint. We think logically and rationally instead of spiritually. We need to see things from God’s point of view—from above.
Spiritual thinking is not irrational or illogical—it is thinking about life from a higher level. The difference between the two is that rational thinking is on ground-level only; spiritual thinking is equally rational, but it takes in a higher level as well as the lower level. It takes in all the facts instead of merely some of them. It is especially important to think spiritually if we are to understand God’s ways with respect to us. That was this man’s problem. Why does God allow these things? Why are the ungodly allowed to profit? If God is God, why does he not wipe them off of the face of the earth? And, on the other hand, if God is God, why does he allow me to suffer as I am suffering at the present time?
That is the problem—trying to understand God’s ways. In the last analysis there is only one answer to that. It is found in Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” That is the ultimate answer.
“The first thing you must realize,” God says to us, “is that when you come to consider me and my ways, you must not do so from that low level to which you have been accustomed, because my thoughts are higher than your thoughts and my ways are higher than your ways.”
Part of the psalmist’s problem was that he had been staying away from the sanctuary, as we all tend to do when we get into this kind of difficulty. He needed desperately to get back in the presence of God and to think spiritually—to see things from God’s point of view. That’s one of the great values in going to church. Without spiritual thinking, we cannot survive for very long in the world. Dr. Robert Gehring, a practicing physician in Dallas and a teacher at Baylor Medical School, said about the church, “We must come together in here in order to survive out there.”
What happened when he went to church? He “understood” their end. When he went to the sanctuary of God, he was given understanding. He did not merely feel better; he was put right in his thinking. He did not merely forget about his problems for the time being; he found a solution.
Religion should not act as a drug on us. It is not, as Novalis first said and Marx then quoted, “the opium of the people.” Worship is not just to make us feel a little bit better and forget our troubles for the time being. It ought to provide new understanding for us. If our worship does not give us understanding, there is something wrong with it, and we would be just as well off without it.
There are lots of ways of forgetting our troubles for a while. You may go to a movie, turn to alcohol or drugs, or even take a trip. Under the effect and influence of these, you may feel much better and happier for a while. But the problem is still there. We need solutions; we need understanding.
The psalmist went to the sanctuary of God and found an explanation that was not merely temporary relief. It was a permanent solution. What did he come to understand when he went to the house of God? He found that the doubts created by the perplexity and confusion in our minds can cause us to become discouraged, and even to abandon our faith altogether. That was the danger this psalmist was facing. He was in danger of blasphemy against God. Of throwing in the towel. Of giving up in his Christian journey altogether. He was saying, “What’s the use of trying to do what is right? I do my best and nothing seems to work.”
Let us never forget that the message of the Bible is addressed primarily to the mind for understanding. How was the psalmist given understanding? What happened to him in the sanctuary taught him how to think right? He learned to think right about life, about God, and about himself.
1. See things as a whole.
His thinking, up until this time, had been incomplete. One of our central troubles is that our thinking tends to be partial and incomplete. Do you remember Matthew Arnold’s line, “Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole”? I think it was the late Earl of Oxford and Asquith who once said that the greatest gift a man could ever have was the capacity for what he called “cubical” thinking, which is the ability to see all sides of a subject. The truth is like a cube and you must see all the facets. I think you will find as we analyze ourselves that the failure to see all sides is the trouble with most of us.
What happened when the psalmist went into the sanctuary of God? He began to see the other side. He began to see things as a whole instead of merely in part. “Then understood I their end.” There were facts he had not considered; there were elements he had not taken in. He needed to see things right through to the end.
Many of the troubles in life today are due to the fact that people still fail to think things all the way through. This man looked only at the prosperity of the ungodly. But when he went to the sanctuary of God, at once he could say, “Then understood I their end.”
That is a great theme in the Bible. James has a great word to say about the case of Job. He says, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord” (James 5:11). Job had been having a hard time, and he could not understand what was the matter. He had not thought on to “the end” of the Lord. The end of the story in the last chapter of Job is that Job, who had been bereaved of everything, ended up having much more than he had before.
That is, “the end” of the Lord. Go on to the end. Do not stop short. Our Lord has put it once and forever in the Sermon on the Mount: “Enter ye in the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
Look at the broad way and how marvelous it seems. You can go along with the crowd; you can do what everybody else is doing, for they are all smiling and joking. Wide and broad are the gates for that way. It all seems to be so marvelous. The other “strait is the gate, and narrow is the way” option seems so miserable: one at a time, a personal decision, fighting the self, and taking up the cross. It seems miserable when we look only at the beginning. That’s why so many people are on the broad way. What is the matter with them? They do not look at the end.
The end of one is destruction, the other, life. The trouble in life today is that people look only at the beginning. Their view of life is what we may call a cinema- or film-star view of life. It always attracts, and all those who live that life are apparently having a marvelous time. So many young people are brought to think that this is life, and that to live like this must be supreme happiness.
But look at the end for those people. Look at them passing in and out of the divorce courts as they turn marriage into licensed prostitution, unworthy to have children because of their selfishness and because they do not know how to bring them up. When people are attracted by appearance, they look only at the surface; they look only at the beginning. They do not look at this type of life in its end; they give no thought whatsoever to the ultimate outcome. Nevertheless, it is as true today as it has ever been, and the Bible has always said it: the end of these things is destruction. See them commit suicide; see them on drugs and alcohol. See their lives ruined and you will know something of “the end.”
2. Think properly about the ungodly.
Their thinking about the ungodly was defective. What then is the teaching of the Bible in this respect? The first thing we can find is that it gives us actual history. We cannot remind ourselves too frequently of the stories of such as those of the flood, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of the Philistines, Assyria, Babylon, and Belshazzar. They teach us the same lesson—they teach us of God’s triumph over his enemies. But towering above all of these stories is the great fact of the resurrection that demonstrates God’s triumph over the devil and all of his powers.
The continuing victory is seen elsewhere in the Acts of the Apostles, and a grand view of the end is given in the book of Revelation. The actual history of the Christian church since the days of the apostles continues the same story. The Bible, however, does not merely record history. It helps us to understand the meaning of history. It teaches certain principles very clearly. The first is that all things, even the evil powers, are under God’s hand. As the psalmist puts it here in verse 18, “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places.” There are no free agents. Nothing happens apart from God. He directs all things to their appointed end.
We see clearly then that the whole position of the ungodly is precarious and dangerous. They are in “slippery places.” All they have is but temporary. The psalmist suddenly saw clearly what Moses saw when he chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25). Age, decay, death, and judgment are certain. The most terrible thing about sin is that it blinds men to the realization of this. They do not see that their pomp and glory are but for a season.
The psalmist saw this so clearly in the sanctuary of God that he not only ceased to be envious of the ungodly, but one would get the impression that he even began to feel sorry for them—that he realized the truth about their position.
3. Think properly about God.
The psalmist’s thinking was set right about God himself. God had put them in slippery places. There is nothing outside the control of God. God is righteous and just and he will ultimately triumph.
The psalmist had questions about the justice and the righteousness of God. He was set straight when he went to the sanctuary. What about the justice and the righteousness of God? The answers are given in the words of Abraham of old, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). It is a fundamental truth. God cannot change.
God is always holy and always righteousness. God cannot be unjust. It is impossible. James put it like this: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:13-17). If it were possible for any change or modification to take place in God, he would no longer be God. God, as he has revealed to us about himself, is from everlasting to everlasting, always, ever the same; he never changes. So we see that the psalmist was put right in his thinking about God, first of all, with regard to the character of God.
We are still confronted, however, by our main question: if I now know that God has all power and that nothing can limit him, and he is always just and righteous, and he is always faithful to his covenant and promises, I therefore ask: why then is it that the ungodly are allowed to flourish and prosper, and his are so frequently to be found in the state of suffering?
Here is the heart of the question that has always troubled mankind and that is probably being asked by millions of people in different parts of the world at this moment: “Why does God permit this kind of thing?”
The psalmist discovered the answer in the house of God. He put it in a very interesting manner. Here it is given in words that we may describe as a very daring anthropomorphism. The psalmist says that the explanation is that God for the time being seems to be asleep. “When thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image,” he says in verse 20. The psalmist, in order to convey what he had discovered in the sanctuary of God, has to put it in human terms. Because of the limitations of our thinking and our language, he uses a pictorial representation in terms of what is true of us as men. God cannot sleep; but he appears to be as one sleeping. It is not that he has not the power, but he is for the time being asleep.
It is not that he has forgotten to be gracious—he is asleep. That is the argument.
Why does God thus appear to be asleep? Why is it that he allows the ungodly to flourish in this way? There are certainly very definite answers in the scriptures to that question.
God permits these things in order that sin may be revealed for what it really is. He may allow it to manifest itself and show itself in all of its ugliness. If you want a classic statement showing this, you will find it in the second half of Romans 1 where Paul traces the decline and the fall of the history of mankind. Paul was writing about the civilization or society of his own day. He describes the terrible ugliness and foulness of life, gives us that horrible list of sins—the sexual perversion and all the other things that characterized life at that time. He says that the real explanation of it all is that mankind, having substituted the creature for the creator, and having rebelled against God’s holy law, had been given over by God to a reprobate mind. God had withdrawn his restraining power. He had allowed sin to develop and reveal itself for what it really is.
God permits this kind of thing also partly as a punishment for sin. If you read Romans 1, you will see that this point comes out there also. God withdraws his restraining power sometimes in order that people may reap some of the consequences of their own sin and thereby he punishes them.
He allows the evil and the evildoers to have their fling. He allows them rope and license in order to make their overthrow more complete and sure. He seems to be asleep as the enemy arises. The enemy blasphemes the name of God and sets himself up proudly against God. Evildoers say, “Nothing can stop us.” Then God suddenly pricks the bubble and the whole empire collapses, and the final destruction is very great.
God allows it in order to display his own greatness and glory in the defeat of such a great enemy. We can see that principle throughout the Old Testament.
God sometimes permits the ungodly to flourish for the sake of discipline in his people. There is no doubt at all about that. He raised up Assyria and others to chasten Israel. What happens when God does awaken? Destruction comes.
4. Think properly about yourself.
We have seen the psalmist put right in his thinking about the ungodly, and in his thinking about God, now we come to consider how he was put right in his thinking about himself. In verses 13-14 he said that he had cleansed his heart in vain because all he had received was suffering. He was very sorrowful for himself. There was nothing wrong with his life. He was a very good man. Now he is being very hard pressed, he is being dealt with very unfairly, and even God seems to be unfair to him. That is how he thought about himself while he was outside the sanctuary. But once he went inside the sanctuary, all of this changed. There he confessed his foolishness and his ignorance. What a transformation! What an entirely different view of himself! It was all a result of his thinking being right, and his becoming truly spiritual.
In these two verses we have this man’s account of his repentance. He learned what he said to himself about himself, and in particular about his recent conduct. It is, indeed, a classic example of honest self-examination. Nothing can help us more than this. There is a danger, of course. We must beware of the danger of morbidity and introspection. We must not continually go around analyzing and condemning ourselves, conscious only of our unworthiness and our lack of fitness. But there is a place for honest self-examination and true confession. We must not spare ourselves and regard our sins, our shortcomings, and our failures too lightly.
There is very little sackcloth and ashes in today’s world. There is very little godly sorrow for sin. There is very little evidence of true repentance. We need the spirit and attitude of the prodigal son in repenting and turning from our sins. We have a wonderful example of repentance in the book of Job.
Do you remember how Job throughout the main part of the book is justifying himself, defending himself, and sometimes feeling sorry for himself? But when he came truly into the presence of God, when he was in the place where he met with God, this is what he said, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).
There was no more godly man than Job. He was the most upright, the most religious man in the world at the time. But now because of his adversity, he no longer remembers the good things that had happened to him nor all the blessings he had enjoyed. Job had been tempted to think of God in the same way as this man in Psalm 73. But when he sees God, he put his hands on his mouth and says, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” I wonder whether we know that experience. Do we know what it is to abhor ourselves? Do we know what it is to repent in dust and ashes?
Paul cried in Romans, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). Have we come to that place? We must confess what we have done. We must not spare ourselves.
We must really confess and turn from our wrong. It is painful, but we must do it. We must get right down to the details—to particularize, to put it all down on paper, to put every detail down before yourself and then to confess and turn from it. We must view it all in the sight of God.
This man was honest with himself; indeed, he was quite brutal. That is an absolute essential. There is no possible growth in the Christian life unless we are ruthlessly honest ourselves. One of the things he discovered when he really saw his position was that he had very largely been producing his own troubles and his own unhappiness. He found in the sanctuary of God that his trouble was not really the ungodly at all—it was himself. He found that he had worked himself up into this condition. He had expected a life of ease and comfort but God had never promised that.
His problem was himself and not God. He says of himself, “so foolish was I.” The word foolish really means “stupid,” or “behaving in a stupid, absurd manner.” He was behaving instinctively. What is the difference between a beast and a man? I have already partly suggested the answer. Surely God’s supreme gift to man is understanding, reason, the power to think. The animal may be highly intelligent, but it lacks the true quality and faculty of reason—however much it may sometime appear to the contrary.
Another way in which the psalmist found that he had been stupid was this: he had obviously held an idea of the godly life that was quite false. He desired pleasure the whole time and thought that his life would be a long round of sunshine and happiness. That is what made him complain and say, “I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long I have been plagued, and chastened every morning.”
Let me put this quite bluntly and plainly. Isn’t this true of all of us? We tend to take all the gifts and the pleasures and the happiness and the joy without saying much to God about it. But the moment anything goes wrong, we begin to grumble. We take our health and strength, our food and clothing, and our loved ones all for granted. But the moment anything goes wrong we start grumbling and complaining and we say, “Why should God do this to me? Why should this happen to me?”
We seem to think that as Christian people, we should never have any trouble. Nothing should ever go wrong with us. The sun should always be shining about us while all who are not Christians should face constant trouble and difficulty. But the Bible has never promised that. It rather promised, “that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). It says also, “unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29). The moment we begin to think, we see the idea that comes to us instinctively is utterly false in light of the teachings of the Bible.
God did not save Daniel from the lion’s den but in it. God did not save the three young Hebrew men from the fiery furnace, but in it. God didn’t save David from the valley, but in it. The Bible says if we are not chastened then we are not the children of God (Hebrews 12:8). If you are a child of God, then you are certainly going to be disciplined, because God is preparing you for holiness. I am persuaded that Christians will have a worse time in life. If they live right, the devil will get them. If they live wrong, God will get them and chastise them.
The psalmist realizes that all of this was happening in the very presence of God. But notice this great and blessed word, “nevertheless.” The psalmist is saying, “I am a failure, I have gone wrong, I have not done my duty. But nevertheless, I’m still in God’s presence. God has not blotted me out. He has allowed me to still be in his presence.” This is amazing grace. He realized that God has forgiven him. He also realized that God held him up and kept him from falling completely. He was well nigh slipped but not completely.
Why? It was because God took a firm grip on him and held him up. God has promised to keep us from falling. He has promised that no one can snatch us out of the Father’s hand. Then he says, “Afterward [you will] receive me to glory.” The word receive is a Hebrew word that is translated “take” in the experience of Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and in the experience of Elijah (2 Kings 2:10). The Bible says that Enoch walked with God and did not die because God “took him” and the scriptures say that Elijah was “taken” up to heaven in a chariot of fire. God took those men into his presence, so he will take us.
The psalmist is so moved that he says, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” Then he makes a commitment of himself to God. Here, in view of all of his experience, he can do nothing but give himself to the worship and adoration of God. That is what he expresses in these two verses.
Have you arrived at a knowledge of God and an experience with God such as this man had? Can you honestly say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee?” Can you say, “There is none on earth that I desire beside thee”? He has come to the place where he feels that God is enough. Even if there are troubles and trials in life, if he has God that is sufficient.
He closes with a resolution to keep near to God. He realizes that there is only one thing that matters, and that is a man’s relationship with God. “If I am near to God,” says this man, “it does not really matter what happens to me. But if I am far from God, nothing can eventually be right.” And this is the very profound conclusion he came to.