Spiritual Recovery (Psalm 73)

Psalm 73 is a reminder that a believer can have difficult spiritual experiences, even ones in which he or she reveals a sinful response connected to the misapplication of a divine promise. 

 

Why is this psalm included in God’s Word? Obviously because God wanted to include it. This means that he inspired it secretly in Asaph’s mind and guided him what to say about his fall and recovery. The Lord included in his Word because Asaph’s experience is not unique, nor are those who are involved in public roles in the church immune from it. 

 

Asaph had an important role in arranging the forms of worship that took place in the temple. One day he rebelled in his heart, and then later he felt divine pressure to record what he had done, why he had done it, and how God took him out of that state. So what we have here is the confession of a restored backslider. Of the psalmists, it is not only David who can be so described.

 

The sanctuary of God

In this sermon, I don’t want to focus on the process of Asaph’s fall or recovery, apart from noting what was the crucial event in that recovery. Rather I want us to consider how a restored believer thinks. What was the crucial event in the recovery? It was when he changed his viewpoint, which is described in verse 17: ‘until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.’ The distinguishing feature of the sanctuary of God is that it informs us of our ultimate destination. 

 

Looking around from elsewhere, we make different assessments. No doubt, many at the close of the nineteenth century would have said, ‘Andrew Carnegie has it all.’ But they would not have said that if they went into the sanctuary of God. Looking around gives us all kinds of perspectives, and often they change with age. But we never get the correct perspective until we go to the sanctuary of God. Therefore we should ask a simple question about all the opinion makers of society, ‘Have they been to the sanctuary of God and discovered their ultimate destination?’

 

What did Asaph see when he went into the sanctuary of God? He tells us in the closing verses of the psalm. He saw the end of the wicked, he saw what he had been like as he made his previous assessments, and he saw God. 

 

Regarding the end of the wicked, he saw that God was not ignoring them, but rather he had set them in slippery places. He mentions his own slippery place in verse 2. He saw that those who aimed to be somebodies in this life without God would become nobodies in the next life, which is an awful realisation (we can think of the rich men in the parables Jesus told, whether the one who filled his barns or the one who ignored the beggar Lazarus). The reality is that those who live for this world will be banished from God’s presence in the next world.

 

Asaph also saw what he had been like during those backsliding days marked by envy and other assessments: ‘When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.’ He imagined initially that he had made great discoveries as he contemplated life; he had decided that the way of godliness was pointless; but he discovered that his wrong viewpoint made him stop reasoning as one made in the image of God. Instead, he had become like a beast, like a non-thinking creature. 

 

Why did Asaph go back to the sanctuary of God? He does not tell us, and maybe there was no particular reason that he could identify. The answer to our question is that it was the secret activity of God that took Asaph back to the sanctuary of God. Asaph may have taken his eye of God for a short time, but God did not take his eye of Asaph even for a moment.

 

What Asaph rediscovered

There are four matters about God that Asaph rediscovered. First, he rediscovered the presence of God: ‘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’ (vv. 23-24). What does he say about the presence of God? 

 

Asaph is not talking here about the divine attribute of omnipresence. One of God’s unique attributes is his omnipresence. In that sense, God is equally present on Mars as he is anywhere on earth. God is equally present in that sense in the middle of the Sahara desert as he is in the centre of London. Rather what Asaph has in mind is the special presence of God that every believer has, and he mentions four things about it.

 

First, it is pervasive, he never leaves his people, even when they are going through periods of doubt and difficulty. God is faithful – Paul reminded Timothy that even when believers are faithless God is faithful. He is our covenant God. 

 

Second, it is paternal, he holds us by the hand. That is how a father leads his infant child, step by step. The child wanders away, but the father still holds on to him. That is true of the Lord, even as Jesus said when he told his disciples that no-one could pluck them out of his hand or out of the Father’s hand. 

 

Third, it is informative because he guides his people by his wisdom. God is like a patient teacher, informing us each day how to live. He does this by his Word, and we have much more of that Word than Asaph had. Yet since Asaph’s shorter amount was sufficient for him, how much more should we be grateful for the longer amount that we have? This is how we are kept as we make our way through life.

 

Fourth, it is purposeful because he leads his people to a wonderful destination, to glory. Everything God does in the lives of his people has this destination in view. Sometimes we imagine our plans are thwarted and we are not happy about it. There may be secondary reasons for that, but if your are a Christian, God works everything for your good. That verse in Romans 8 does not say that the Lord is somehow only observing things and then at the end will produce whatever good he has in mind. Rather, the verb is in the present tense; in everything that happens to you, and indeed anywhere, what he has in mind is your future experience of eternal glory.

 

Second, he rediscovered the pre-eminence of God: ‘Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.’ Heaven is full of interesting people, and we find them interesting for various reasons. And the reasons are valid. We read about believers in the Bible and we want to meet them. We read about others in church history and we want to meet them. We have relatives there and we want to meet them. We want to discover who prayed for us before our conversion. But they are not the pre-eminent ones in heaven. God is, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the ever-blessed Trinity, who planned our salvation in eternity, provided it through the cross and through the grace of God, and will perfect it in glory. And in particular, since it is through him that we will see the Father and the Spirit, we give Jesus a special place because it will be through him that we will discover in heaven what God has in store.

 

What about life in earth? Asaph, for a while, deluded himself by thinking the things of this world would satisfy his soul. He discovered that they didn’t and he became miserable. As Augustine put it, there is in each of us a God-shaped vacuum that only God can fill. Jesus is the bread of life on earth and the water of life on earth. George Muller said on one occasion that he knew Jesus better than he knew anyone on earth. That was very Pauline, because Paul expressed a similar desire in Philippians 3 when he said, after thirty years of Christian service, that he wanted to know Jesus more.

 

The third rediscovery that Asaph made was about the power of God: ‘My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’ We need power for the spiritual life even as we need energy for our natural lives. As we know, Paul prays that the Ephesians would be given power so that they could experience the love of Christ in their souls: ‘so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge’ (Eph. 3:17-19). In that same letter, in chapter one, Paul prays that the Ephesians would realise and experience how much power was available to them. There is power for restoration as Asaph discovered. And Paul reminds us that God’s power is perfected in the weakness of believers.

 

The protection of God

The fourth discovery that Asaph made was the readiness of God as a protection for him in contrast to whatever the wicked looked to for help at any time. ‘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.’ Having observed the way of the wicked, and having even wanted it for a short time, he now affirmed that the nearness of God was good, the nearness of the pervasive, pre-eminent, powerful God. Connected to this perspective is the detail that Asaph wants to make a pronouncement. The Lord was not his refuge so that he should remain silent. The opposite was the case. Because God was for him, he would have to speak about God and his works.

 

Maybe we have had our moments of wondering if we are missing out on something that the worldly have. But in the sanctuary of God, we have recovered our spiritual bearings. Jesus is the shepherd who recovers his people from their slippery slopes and reminds them that he is the powerful Saviour who is always with them, that he is guiding them through life towards the glory to come. He has a location where we can contemplate together the fact that he has brought us into the fold, is keep us safe through our journey in this world, and will take us to heaven. That location is the sanctuary of God.