My wife and I are reading through the Psalms in our evening reading and occasionally a nugget of the Psalms jumps out of the page. Don’t you love it when, after years of reading the “Old Book” passages become alive, reinforcing old teachings or simply warming your heart.
This is the book of Psalms, and it is rich.
I pray I can communicate a portion of the blessing we receive from this wonderful book.
We are entering Book three of the Psalms, and as discussed in out previous post, Psalms for Psome – Ps 72.06, this section of Psalms has a theme that is similar to the book of Leviticus, and emphasizes the correct approach to our God, holiness in the believers life and actions and proper heart felt worship of the Lord.
We also will be missing the pen of David in this portion, with his input decreasing. New authors we may have never encountered in the Psalms will appear, even Moses in the 90th Psalm. For this Psalm, we meet again the author of Psalm 50, and we will be reading his writings from Psalm 73 through to Psalm 83.
He served as a chief musician and prophet during the reign of David, and produced some of the most difficult passages in the Psalms to understand. His influence was not quelled by his passing, for there was a group of musicians and poets that came behind him, calling themselves the sons of Asaph, continuing in worship even through the days of Ezra.
With this short introduction to our author, lets consider Psalm 73, a psalm that speaks of the importance of focus for the believer!
Psalm 73:1 A Psalm of Asaph. Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
Psalm 73:2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.
Psalm 73:3 For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Asaph begins his message with a claim of the goodness of God, but he wants to be understood clearly. He may have simply stated “God is good to Israel”, but that was not clear enough for Asaph. He needed to define who Israel was that God was good to.
To those who are pure of heart.
We have previously discussed the concept of the remnant in this blog, and I simply want to remind my gentle reader that within the nation of Israel, within the population of the nation of Israel, there existed those who loved and followed after God. Those who had the faith of Abraham, and not simply some biological tie to the man of faith by claiming the blood of Abraham was coursing through their veins.
The only blood that mattered in God’s eyes was the blood of His Son. Bloodlines of the patriarchs of old, were only important in order to identify the Son, to provide a way of defining through which family of man the promised Messiah would come.
It has always been about faith, and any claim to superiority through some blood line has always been an affront to God, even in the days of the Messiah.
John 8:37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.
The very bloodline that was a claim to superiority before God was the same bloodline that crucified the God they claimed favored them.
Asaph is making clear that those who are of faith in God will experience the goodness of God. Yet even as I say that, those whose hearts are pure have times of weakness, times when focus is blurred, distracted and our minds wander into dangerous thinking. Such was Asaph’s experience in this Psalm.
To think that a man of God such as Asaph came so close to stumbling in his walk with God is so sad, and yet in his stumbling, he recounts for us his mistake, his error in his thinking, his error in focus.
And he get’s to the problem immediately in verse 3.
Envious of the arrogant
As a quick reminder, envy and jealousy are not synonyms, though they are related. To be jealous is related to the fear of loosing something one already has, be it a possession or a person. Envy is associated with what others possess, and is the act of desiring to have what they have. Envy is linked to covetousness, and is associated with idolatry.
Asaph is in trouble here!
One question I do have for my reader.
Is Asaph envious of the things the arrogant have, or might he be admitting to being envious of the ability to be arrogant. For those who can freely exhibit an arrogance tend to not hesitate to acquire, to obtain and to seek all they can.
Is he simply wanting things, or is he wanting the ability to get things?
What thinkest thou? Leave me a comment below if you have an opinion.
For our time this morning, Asaph provides us a warning, and the warning is for the believer to maintain correct focus, to look to the goodness of God, not the abundance of garbage the arrogant obtain!
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