WHY GOD?
Sermon Text - Psalm 73:1-28
Have you ever sat and read the newspaper, or watched the news on TV and wondered why does God allow such things to happen? Small children are kidnapped and murdered, and not just those from ungodly homes, but Christian homes as well. The case of the recent serial killings of women in our area, or the serial killings in the Washington D. C. are prime examples of people who are undoubtedly demonically inspired to commit their heinous crimes. Drunken drivers who not only take their own lives into their hands every time they get behind the steering wheel of a car, but they put the lives of every innocent person they pass on the highway.
Why does God allow those things to go on? Why doesn’t God bring judgment upon them quickly and stop much of these evil deeds? Why, God do you allow those things to go on and on? Why don’t you come quickly and rid this world of the power of sin that rules in the hearts of men?
It sometimes seems that those who defy God and shake their fists in his face, daring him to do anything to stop them, are the most prosperous people on earth. They seem to be prosperous; sometimes more than those who do everything they can to serve God.
If we will look at Psalms 73 we will find that we are not the only ones who have wondered concerning these things. Some say that Asaph actually wrote Psalm 73 –83 since he was supposed to be very gifted in poetry and music, but most agree that it is more likely that David wrote this Psalm and sent it for the benefit Asaph.
Perhaps David saw in Asaph some of the same mannerisms and same questions that David had within his own heart. David had come to realize the answer and now it was time to share his knowledge with Asaph and the rest of God’s people so that we all could understand God’s ways just a little better.
First David gives praise and glory to God because God had chosen both himself and the nation of Israel for God’s own people. What a blessed and wonderful place to be in. What a place of honor! To think that God would choose you and I, among all the people on planet Earth to be his child. To pick us out of the billions of souls that walk this planet right now, lift us out of the miry pits of sin and say to himself, “now that’s a keeper”. I choose you and you and you. What a mighty miracle of love and compassion that is! Praise God forevermore for choosing me!
John 15:16, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you."
God has chosen each of us and given us the chance to have a clean heart before him. He has washed us in his own blood and given us his righteousness. We are a people most blessed.
Even so, there are times when we lose sight of what God has done for us. We are so very prone to getting our eyes on the things of this world and upon those who live wickedly and still seem to prosper. Sometimes those temptations are almost more than we can bear, especially if we dwell upon them for very long. Our foot begins to slip and before we know it we are sliding back into that same miry clay that God delivered us from in the first place.
Every thing in this world tends toward the downside. It takes a committed and consecrated life to remain strong in the Lord. You won’t stay there by accident. Either you will be working to remain strong or you will be growing weaker by the minute. Don’t ever think that you can coast your way into Heaven. It’s going to require hard work and dedication along with some “sweat equity” as you constantly strive to keep your relationship with Jesus as strong as ever.
Psalms 73:2 - But as for me my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped
David knew what it was like to feel that way too. He had gotten his eyes off of the pure things of God and began to see the false prosperity and the indulgent lifestyle of those who lived worldly. He became envious at their lives; envious that they didn’t seem to care about anything; envious that they could live their lives, day to day, year after year, and never see any great consequences for their disregard of God’s ways.
Those that David saw didn’t seem to give a thought to their eternal destiny. They lived for the “here and now”. No thoughts of Heaven brought concern to their hearts as to whether they would go there or not. No thoughts of the flames of Hell filled their minds for they were totally ignorant of its existence. They were able to go through life carefree and worry free concerning the condition of their eternal soul.
Even though they lived in total oblivion to the ways of the Lord, there seemed to be no present consequence of their ignorance about God. God did not strike them with a great plague, cast a bolt of lightning at their heads, bring great storms of judgment upon them, or any such thing. It was as though God just ignored their sin and let them go on and on.
David said that it was his observation that they just lived their entire lives with just as much, if not more healthy bodies and successful lives and with worldly prosperity that often exceeded even those who lived for the Lord.
How could this be? Why are they not more sickly because of the power of sin? Why is not their wealth destroyed or wasted more than those who work hard to earn a living and then give great portions of their earnings to the Lord’s work? Where is the equity in this God? Why don’t you step in and do something about it and make life a bit more fair?
Not only were they just as blessed, or more blessed than God’s people, it seemed that for many of them, they just didn’t have to work nearly as hard to get what they had. It was as though they could do everything wrong and still get the best that life had to give while God’s people struggled and fought, scratched and toiled for even the smallest of blessings.
Because they seem to get away with their sin, those who live that way wear their pride in their own self-gratifying accomplishments about their neck like a chain and rattle it in the face of every Christian, and in the face of God Almighty as if to say, “we don’t need God; we are our own God. We can do whatever we want; accomplish whatever we want; and we don’t need a bunch of rules and regulations from a God who doesn’t seem to care anyway.”
They are engulfed in the “Pride of Life” and they are ever searching for anything that will lift them up in the eyes of other men. They don’t want to hear anything about having a meek and quiet spirit. Their pride won’t allow them to recognize anyone or anything that is greater than themselves.
Their own self-reliance and the fact that they are able to get away with sin convinces them that they will never be judged and so there is no limit to the violence that they will do to other people to get what they want. They will steal from the poor, kill the defenceless, take hope from the hopeless, and scheme to have it all for themselves.
Why God? Why do you allow them to have such pride and get away with it? Why doesn’t your Word come to pass that says in Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." I thought that your Word would never fail! Why doesn’t it work now?
Instead of God’s judgment against their pride, destruction of their labors, and their fall from their high positions in the ranks of men, they have more than any heart could want. They not only get what they want but more besides. Why God? Why does this go on and on?
Not only do they lift themselves above the laws of men but they lift themselves above the God of Heaven and deny your very existence. Some even have the arrogance to say that if God is there, he either doesn’t care or he is dead. They blaspheme your name, discredit your works, attempt to put to nothing your Word, make every attempt to disprove the truths of the Bible – and you let them get away with it for days without end! Why God? Why don’t you stop them now?
Because the worldly crowd are allowed to go on without answering for their lives of sin and shame, many of God’s own people are persuaded to turn back for they think that living for God and going against the tide of sin is a futile attempt. Some are even convinced that God isn’t real, and that this life is all there is so why not enjoy it now? Why God? Why do you allow your own people to be drawn away by sin? Why don’t you stop the power of sin to entice and tempt your own children? It’s bad enough that you allow sinners to go on in their sin but why let your own children be drawn back into it? Can’t you stop it?
David says what many of us have probably thought from time to time, “God I have it worse than the worst sinner in town! Why don’t you fix it and make it fair. After all, I am your child am I not?”
You are quick to get on my case if I do something wrong God. Why don’t you correct the sinner as quickly? If I say one wrong word, the Holy Spirit quickens my heart and jabs me with a feeling of guilt. If I make one bad step into the smallest of sins, my heart within me is grieved by your Spirit and your Word cuts me to the quick. I can’t get away with anything and the sinner gets away with murder with no feelings of guilt or grief. There’s something wrong with this picture God! Where is your righteous judgment when we need it? Where is your justice? Why God? Why don’t you do something about all of this?
David says in Psalms 73:16 - When I thought to know this - how could he reconcile the prosperity of the wicked, and the afflictions of the righteous, to the perfection of God - it was too painful for him. He just could not figure out why God did things the way he did. It all seemed so unfair, so unjust. He knew that God was a God of justice so, Why God? Why don’t you do something about all of this?
Then David begins to give us the answer for all the questions of the injustice that is allowed to go on and on.
Psalms 73:17 - Until I went into the sanctuary of God - The tabernacle or house of God, where the Word of God was read and explained, prayer was made, and sacrifices offered up, and where fellowship was had with the saints, and communion with God himself; which for one hour or moment is preferable to all the prosperity of the wicked, during their whole life.
…then understood I their end - both of the godly and of the wicked; that the end of the righteous is peace, rest, salvation, and eternal life, and the end of the wicked is ruin, destruction, and death.
Psalms 73:18 - Surely thou didst set them in slippery places. Such are places of honor and riches. How quickly can honor be lost by one wrong word or one wrong move! How quickly can riches be lost! Just look that stock market to see how fast wealth can go. Millions of dollars can be made in a moment of time and lost again before we can even shout for joy. Money and wealth are so easily lost. Surely that is a slippery place!
“...thou castest them down into destruction…” – God’s judgments are sure and though they may not happen according to our desired time table, they come nonetheless. Every man is brought into the place where he must answer for all that he does and all that he is. Great kings, paupers, the rich and famous, and the poor and infamous will all stand before God. All of them must face physical death and after that the eternal judgment. There is no escaping God’s justice in the end.
Psalms 73:19 - How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment?.... Very suddenly, which is often the case of wicked men, who cry Peace and safety, destruction comes upon them. The punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Pharaoh and his host, and of Korah and his company who were destroyed when they attempted to enter the Tabernacle in the Wilderness with strange fire and the fire shot from God’s altar and burned them alive, then the earth opened all their followers were swallowed alive into the flames of Hell. How quickly does God’s judgment fall when He chooses to bring it to past!
“…they are utterly consumed with terrors”- their destruction is not only sudden, but complete, like the breaking in pieces of a clay pot; every piece of that pot cannot be gathered up and used, or it’s like the casting of a millstone into the sea, which will never rise more; such will be the destruction of antichrist and all who follow him.
Psalms 73:20, “As a dream when one awaketh, thou shalt despise their image,” – The prosperity of the wicked is all an illusion, and all a dream. When they lift up their eyes in hell, and are called forth in the second resurrection to face the One that they would not believe in, they will find themselves destitute of all their riches and honor, and it will be as if they had only dreamed of them, and never enjoyed them!
Psalms 73:21 – David says, “Thus my heart was grieved and I was pricked in my reins,”
David wasn’t grieved by his own sin, nor with the sins of the wicked, but at their prosperity! Their prosperity was not real. It was so very temporary. God would not allow them to shake their fist in his face and continue forever. How could David, how can we question God’s justice? How can we ever be deceived into thinking that judgment won’t come for sin?
Psalms 73:22 – “So foolish was I and ignorant. I was as a beast before thee.” Can you relate to David? God, I have been so dumb! I just don’t know why or how I could doubt your judgments! I don’t know how I can question your ways! I don’t know how I could ever figure out your ways for I know that your thoughts and your ways are far above my understanding. I will place my faith in you; put all those unanswered questions at your feet and then walk away and let you be the sovereign God who controls all things. I will never know all the answers in this life. It is sufficient that I know that you know and that’s all I need to know!
Psalms 73:28, “But it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God; that I may declare all thy works…”
We must all come to the same conclusion that David does. It is worth serving God in the end! It is worth serving God in this life! I will put my trust in him and serve him all the days of my life.
The wicked may seem to prosper now, but it’s only an illusion that will soon be forever gone. The promises of God will stand forever and ever!
