Asaph’s Discovery (Part 3 of 4)

Believers, when we are tempted to complain about God's goodness, we need to think about Asaph in this psalm.

January 16, 2021

"Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.  Whom have I in heaven but thee?  and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee.  My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever."

Psalm 73:24-26

Part 3

Yesterday:  Asaph’s Hasty Assumption: Living Right is Just not Worth It!
“Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocency” (Psalm 73:13).  Asaph wondered why he should even try to live godly since “the wicked have all the perks?”

 

Today:  Asaph’s Change of Perspective

It seems that God’s Word was speaking to Asaph’s heart all along.  Asaph finally recognized that the way he is talking will offend God’s faithful children (v. 15).  He did not want his despair over his perceived unfair treatment of the wicked to rub off on other believers.  This painful thought put him in a bind.  He knew that often the ungodly wicked seem to have good lives.  And he knew how difficult his life had been, and he felt like God had been chastening him.  But he knew it was wrong to influence believers with his pessimistic talk about God.  This was all too painful for him! (v. 16).

These thoughts and feelings kept building in Asaph until he could bring his focus in on the reality of his circumstances.  And how did he do that?  He went “into the sanctuary of God! (v. 17a).  He finally came to the place he should have been all along, with his God.

“Until I went into the sanctuary of God” (Psalm 73:17a).

“What then did the psalmist do?  The answer to some will seem perfectly childish.  He went to church. . . . Just what others got out of this service we are not told.  But the psalmist came into possession of certain gripping convictions that steadied him and enabled him to walk in the after days with firmness and assurance”[1] (Chappell).

Spending time with God changed Asaph’s outlook.

 

“Then I understood their end” (v. 17b).

Asaph’s perspective turned from examining his “miserable life,” with his own greatly limited microscope, to God’s telescopic view seeing the panorama of the eternal.  Now he was seeing all this from God’s perspective…  This encounter with eternity gave Asaph a reality check on the “end of the wicked!”  Regardless of their power, riches, fame, and fortune, in this life, this is the best that these ungodly wicked sinners will ever know.  And then will come their eternal judgment!  These sinners will have to face the wrath of the very God they have blasphemed with their lives.

And then he was reminded of “the end of believers.”  This eternal perspective reminded him that this life, good or bad, easy or difficult, free or oppressed, is the very worst that any child of God will ever know.  And after this life—heaven is waiting, with our Lord, forever! (John 14:1-4).

For all of Asaph’s sinful thinking and blaming God, he was crushed!  He said to God,

“Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins.  So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee” (Psalm 73:21-22)!

Yes, he was broken by his foolish sin.  God has helped him with an attitude adjustment, and now he’s ready to love, serve, and glorify his God once again.

Come back tomorrow as we see how God resolved these things in Asaph’s thinking.  What a loving, gracious God is ours!

 

Quote:  Believers, when we sin, we need to keep a short “sin account” with God.  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

 

 

 

[1] Chappell’s quote is from the Enduring Word Commentary, the electronic version in eSword.  Psalm 73:17.