Psalm 73
Scripture:
A Psalm of Asaph.
1 Truly God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.
2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,
my steps had nearly slipped.
3 For I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
4 For they have no pangs until death;
their bodies are fat and sleek.
5 They are not in trouble as others are;
they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.
6 Therefore pride is their necklace;
violence covers them as a garment.
7 Their eyes swell out through fatness;
their hearts overflow with follies.
8 They scoff and speak with malice;
loftily they threaten oppression.
9 They set their mouths against the heavens,
and their tongue struts through the earth.
10 Therefore his people turn back to them,
and find no fault in them.
11 And they say, “How can God know?
Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
12 Behold, these are the wicked;
always at ease, they increase in riches.
13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean
and washed my hands in innocence.
14 For all the day long I have been stricken
and rebuked every morning.
15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,”
I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
16 But when I thought how to understand this,
it seemed to me a wearisome task,
17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;
then I discerned their end.
18 Truly you set them in slippery places;
you make them fall to ruin.
19 How they are destroyed in a moment,
swept away utterly by terrors!
20 Like a dream when one awakes,
O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.
21 When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
22 I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.
23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
28 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.
Devotion:
Psalm 73 holds a tension that the culture around us is not very good at holding: faithfulness is costly, and it is worth it anyway. The psalm will not let you pretend otherwise on either side.
On one side is the temptation to pretend the narrow road is easy, to tell yourself that following God always pays off in visible, measurable ways and that if things are hard, you must be doing something wrong. Asaph had been faithful, and things were hard. Habakkuk was a prophet, and things were about to get worse. Jesus himself walked the narrowest road of anyone and died on it. Faithfulness does not come with a promise of ease.
On the other side is the temptation to let the difficulty of the road convince you it is the wrong one. To look at the wide road, with its apparent comfort and its crowds, and wonder if you have been missing something. That is exactly where Asaph was in verses 2 through 14. And the answer he found in the sanctuary was not that the difficulty disappears. It is that nearness to God is worth more than everything he envied.
The application of this psalm is going to look different for each person reading it. For some, it will mean naming the envy honestly and bringing it to God instead of sitting with it alone. For others, it will mean identifying a specific place where the narrow road has felt too costly and deciding, concretely, to stay on it. For others still, it may mean finding a way back into the sanctuary, into regular and unhurried time with God, because that is where the perspective shifts. Ask God what He is saying specifically to you, and make it specific enough to actually act on.
HEAR about it:
Apply:
Write your specific, measurable application. What will you do differently this week because of Psalm 73? Be concrete, make it something you can actually report back on.
Prayer and Reflection:
Take a few minutes to sit quietly and reflect on the passage you read today. Let the Holy Spirit bring to mind what stood out to you and why. Then spend some time in prayer. Pray for the people around you, for your outlook on this day, and for the needs you are carrying in your own life.
Father, Asaph named his envy and brought it to the sanctuary. Habakkuk named his losses and chose to rejoice anyway. I want that kind of honest, costly faithfulness. Do not let this week's reading stay in my head. Work it down into wherever it actually needs to go, whether that is a habit I need to build, a resentment I need to release, or a relationship where I have been treating the narrow road as optional. Give me the courage to follow through. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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