Psalm 73:1–17 // When faith feels unrewarded // Rick Duncan
Psalm 73 starts with faith and hope. “Truly God is good to His people.” But the author, Asaph, doesn’t stay there for long. The Psalm is a raw reflection on the reality of life.
We know what it’s like when doing the right things don’t lead to blessing. We live in a fallen world where following the Lord often goes unrewarded. Yes, God is good, “but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.”
What caused the stumbling and the slipping? Comparison. And envy.
When the Asaph looked at what was going on in the world around him, he struggles. Bad things are happening to good people. Good things are happening to bad people.
The wicked are well off and the righteous are not. The ungodly are secure, healthy, strong, admired, and at ease. The godly seek to live in a way that pleases God; but they suffer. The disconnect is unsettling.
Most of us don’t struggle too much with good things happening to bad people until the good things stop happening for us. When our faithfulness leads to hardship, the question comes: What good is it to serve God?
We begin to resent the prosperity of the arrogant. We rehearse their ease and we magnify our hurt. Our envy doesn’t only distort how we see others and ourselves, it distorts how we see God. We start doubting His generosity. We see Him as distant, uncaring, and unjust.
In verses 12-14 our thoughts are exposed: “The wicked get by with everything; they have it made… I’ve been stupid to play by the rules; what has it gotten me? A long run of bad luck, that’s what…” (The Message). Sacrifice isn’t worth it. Faithfulness doesn’t pay.
Lent gives us permission to admit these thoughts. Pretending they aren’t there and stuffing our feelings end up hurting us and our relationship with God. He wants us to bring our true selves to Him.
Say the hard stuff out loud to God. Get it all on the table. He’s big enough to take anything we can dish out to Him.
Asaph didn’t voice his cynicism publicly (v. 15). He didn’t want to hurt the faith of other children of God. But he did think deeply about these troubling things.
But something changed. In verse 17, we see the pivot point for Asaph. “Until.”
Until what? Until he worshiped the LORD. When Asaph worshipped, God gave him a glimpse of the rest of the story. When he stopped looking at the temporal and started looking at the eternal, he gained perspective.
Worship reorients us. We see that the fruit that the wicked are enjoying is fragile. What seems secure is slippery. Prosperity, apart from a relationship with God, is precarious. They are on the way to destruction.
Prosperity can numb the soul. Comfort can dull the spirit. Affluence can harden the heart. What looks like reward now can lead to ruin later. Judgment is coming.
When Asaph had his “aha” moment, he didn’t gloat that his enemy’s demise was coming. He repented. He admitted that envy had entered his heart and clouded his mind.
Asaph ran to God, “I am continually with You” (v. 23a). And God didn’t reject him. God held his right hand (v. 23b). God didn’t let him go. And Aspah learned that God’s presence was enough, “There is nothing on earth that I desire besides You” (v. 25).
Good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people is, to be sure, a mystery. So, how does God respond? God answers that mystery with another mystery. Himself.
Elisabeth Elliot’s life was shaped by profound losses. Her first husband was martyred early in their marriage, leaving her a single mother. Years later her second husband died of cancer. In her final season of life, she suffered Alzheimer’s disease. In her book, Suffering is Never for Nothing, she points out that what we need from God are not answers. Instead, we get God Himself.
She wrote, “God, through my own troubles and sufferings, has not given me explanations. But He has met me as a person, as an individual, and that’s what we need. Who of us in the worst pit we’ve even been in needs anything as much as we need company” (p. 23)?
God Himself becomes our portion. Not answers. Not explanations. God. Asaph’s question shifts from “Why do they have it so good?” to “Whom have I in heaven but You?”
Lent gives us room to make the same shift. The greatest good is not a pain-free life, but a God-saturated life. When bad things are happening to you, your obedience is not wasted.
Asaph started by acknowledging God’s goodness. And he ends there, too. “The nearness of God is my good.” HIs circumstances haven’t changed. But his clarity has been restored.
When bad things happen to us, we can experience God’s presence. Now and forevermore. Isn’t that good enough?
A question to consider:
When are you most tempted to measure God’s goodness by tangible blessings rather than by His presence?
A prompt for prayer:
Be still before God. Name when and how your obedience has felt disregarded by God. Tell Him where envy or resentment has crept into your life. Ask God to help you make room for His presence – to trust that nearness to Him is not a consolation prize, but the greatest gift.
