Until I went into the sanctuary of God - Psalm 73

Psalm 73:21-25-28

Whom have I in heaven but you?

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;

you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

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.

It wasn't always this way, you know. This Psalm of Asaph. He wasn't always worshipping God the way we see him do in verses 25-28. Look at what he says: "there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you...but for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge." 

This is a man of great faith, right? The answer is yes. But it wasn't always that way. He got to this point of contentment in God but he came to it kicking and screaming, like a snobby rich kid who had to stay at a 3 star hotel instead of the usual 5 where there is no room service but there is a slightly strange smell #lifeisover.

Yet, his issues are not to be trivialized. I would imagine you have felt the way Asaph has felt at one point or another. Lets break that down, shall we?

Asaph is angry and disillusioned at the fact that wicked people are prospering. 

4For they have no pangs until death;

their bodies are fat and sleek.

5They are not in trouble as others are;

they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.

12Behold, these are the wicked;

always at ease, they increase in riches.

In verses 4-12 Asaph tells us what the problem is. He is looking at the wicked, those who do not follow God and sees that they have all the things he wants. It seems their life is quite blessed, even though they could give a rip about the creator of the universe. 

Asaph tells us how this impacted his relationship with God

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...

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.

Very clearly, Asaph's soul became embittered towards God as he tried to make sense of something that seemed so unjust to him. It was simply unfair that he would do everything right and then watch those who could care less about God get all the things he wanted. In verse 13 he reaches a point where he actually throws in the towel, he gives up. He calls faith in God vain. Why? Because he isn't getting what he thinks he should be getting, namely, the prosperity of the wicked.

In addition to seeing his sin Asaph begins to see that his faith in God was oriented on the wrong thing. He was ready to give up on God because he thought that if he followed God it would be his ticket to the good life. Asaph is beginning to see how misplaced his faith is. 

God is the only Treasure that is satisfying

17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;

then I discerned their end.

This is the central verse of the chapter and the point where everything changes. Up until this point Asaph was throwing a tantrum of blinding anger and he could not make sense of his situation. Until he went into the sanctuary of God, that is. This tells us at least two things:

First, it demonstrates the need to see life as God sees it, from his perspective. Until we come to the wisdom of God and grow in his wisdom, we won't come to the right conclusions and we will be stuck in the pit of anger, bitterness, envy, disillusionment, and hopelessness. When he sees things the way God does, he realizes something crucially important: God is the only treasure that is satisfying.

He realizes that if you have all the world minus God, you have nothing. Jim Carey recently said that he wished everyone in the world could have it all for just a week so that they can see how empty it really is. On the flip side, if you have nothing of the world but still have God, you have everything. This is what brings him to the point of saying "YOU ARE MY PORTION FOREVER!" 

Second, verse 17 tells us that simply being with God solves a lot of very practical issues. Asaph doesn't do a teaching series on dealing with envy, not that that would be a negative thing. We are not told how or why he went into the sanctuary of God. Perhaps it was a counselor who pointed him there or a sermon he heard. Nonetheless, being with God and seeing his beauty satisfies our soul and solves a million problems that we would never be able to address if we targeted the problem. Go and be with God and learn to draw near to him. This is what you need!

Asaph is able to self diagnose what his sin after being in the sanctuary of God

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.

Yes, these are the first three verses, I should have started with this. Yes, but no. Asaph is writing after the entire episode ("ep" for short). This means that his self diagnosis was a result of his time in the sanctuary of God. 

Prior to going into the sanctuary Asaph would have diagnosed his issue very differently. He would have attributed his troubles to the injustice of the prosperity of the wicked. It would have been something outside of him, ultimately God, that he was seeing as the source of his trouble.

After the sanctuary Asaph sees his sin and that his sin was the cause of his trouble. It was nobody's fault but his own. He was envious. He fell out of love with God and in love with the things of this world. It was his problem and he has taken ownership of it. 

God Is Good to Israel

We see the grace of God to sinners highlighted in the very first verse. Even before Asaph tells us anything he frames the entire ep with God's grace, his mercy, his patience, his love...his goodness.