Psalms 73:13

Psalms 73:13

Notice

I. How forgetfulness of God leads us to chafe under the painful dispensations of human life. It is an honest confession which we find in the third verse: "I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." It is the actual stress of life, contact with all its hard and trying realities, that tests our faith. Can we bear to "see" the prosperity of the wicked while we are ourselves in adversity? (1) Notice how envy grows into self-righteousness. The words, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain," etc., suggest one who is pretty well satisfied with himself if he has nothing to reproach himself with, who is content to be free from blame, with very little thought of a higher life to which God is calling him, a life of patience and faith, a life of entire dependence upon God. (2) Mark, again, the flippant self-satisfaction, the deep distrust of God, which breathes in vers. 10-14. The suggestion is, "We good men ought not to be treated thus; we are not being dealt with righteously." Asaph is startled when he has put his thought into words, and says, "If I say, I will speak thus, behold, I should offend against the generation of Thy children." God does not judge men in the hasty way in which we judge them. His counsel takes in other ends than merely to make the righteous happy and the unrighteous unhappy. He has a purpose in His forbearance with the guilty: He endures with much longsuffering and does them good continually that He may bring them to Himself. He has a purpose in the painful discipline He often appoints the godly: to make them purer, holier, stronger men.

II. Some considerations which may help us to trust that God is good in ordaining for us the painful dispensations of human life, (1) Perhaps we could not have borne prosperity. When Asaph went into the sanctuary of God and saw the end of the wicked, he learned that they had been "set in slippery places," that the pride which compassed them about as a chain, that their having more than heart could wish, had but sealed them up against the day of desolation and the terrors that should utterly consume them. And then there opens upon him an awful vision of what prosperity might have done for him. Trembling as at an awful peril he has just escaped, he gives himself to God's guidance: "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." (2) We cannot accept as final the answer which was given to Asaph; the Gospel reveals to us a sublimer truth. The end of the wicked, he saw, was their destruction; their restoration is the end for which we are taught to hope and labour. Think how hopeless would be their restoration if all the suffering of life were apportioned to them, and the righteous were never troubled. It is the grace of God that restores the ungodly, not His punishments. (3) Enter again the sanctuary, and look on Christ. Who will not choose to be with Christ in humiliation and distress? God has better things to give His children than prosperity. It is better to be brave than rich; patience is better than comfort. (4) Nor can we understand the meaning of life at all while we are thinking only of ourselves. God would have us take our part in the restoring of the wicked to Himself. The lessons that we learn in our endurance give us a power over men that nothing else can give.

A. Mackennal, Christ's Healing Touch,p. 72.

Reference: Psalms 73:15; Psalms 73:16. W. Baird, Hallowing of our Common Life,p. 54.