Introduction

Who is Asaph?

Asaph is credited with writing this psalm. Asaph was a very public figure in the temple. He was the “Chris Tomlin” of his day. Asaph was a musician that served as a worship leader in the temple during the reign of King David. He was maybe better described as the lead worshipper in the temple. He was the one who stirred up other people to worship God. He was the man who would rally God’s people together to sing out praises to their King. He was the one saying:

• Do you see how valuable our King is?
• Do you remember how God delivered us in the past?
• Let’s worship our God and King for who He is and for what He has done for us!

Look at verse 1 with me

Truly God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

Asaph, being consistent with his position as a worshipper, he acknowledges that God is good and that God has blessed Israel in the past. The phrase “pure in heart” does not mean sinlessness, necessarily, but it refers to people who have made a commitment to God. It is true that God will bless and has blessed people who walk in the path of righteousness. In Psalm 1 we learned that a man is blessed who delights in the law of the Lord.

The truth that God blesses righteousness is not creating an issue in Asaph’s mind, but another area of confusion has arisen. The foundational belief that God blesses those in the path of righteousness creates a problem for him when he looks at the ungodly.

• Why do ungodly men experience prosperity when they are totally indifferent to God?
• If God is good, then why are his people suffering and the ungodly are prospering?

Sometimes Godly Men have Doubts

The very basis for Asaph’s worship leading was being brought into question. How can he continue to lead people in worship to God if he himself is not convinced that God is good all the time? Asaph is very open and honest that he was in a crisis of belief and that he was struggling with worldliness.

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.

Verse 2-3 could be translated this way, “In sharp contrast to what I know about God’s goodness, the prosperity of the ungodly is drawing me into worldliness.” I really appreciate Asaph’s honesty about his doubts and about his temptation. I can relate to his struggle.

His doubting and his struggles do not indicate that he had lost his faith. We all struggle with doubts some times. Doubting is different that unbelief. However, doubt can weaken our spiritual foundations and they need to be dealt with. James 1:6 says that the man who doubts is “like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.”

Asaph is admitting that there was an error in his thinking and it was causing him to nearly slip. Errors in our thinking and in our feelings can often affect the way that we make decisions. Spurgeon says “There is an intimate connection between the heart and the feet.” In other words, there is a connection between where our affections lie and the way we make decisions.

He realized that he was going to stall out in his spiritual growth until he came to grips with these doubts in his heart. He was like a man trying to walk up an icy hill. He was stepping and slipping and not moving ahead. To come to grips with these feelings and to get back on track with God, he clearly defines his struggles and lays it out for us in no uncertain terms. He is upset – angry – peeved – that ungodly men are often prosperous.

Ungodly Men are Often Prosperous

It drove him crazy that godless men had so much prosperity. It might drive you crazy too. You might ask questions like:

• How come that guy who is such a jerk managed to marry such a great wife while I’m still single?
• How come that women’s husband takes such good care of her while my husband is a lazy bum?
• How come that guys smokes and drinks and eats junk food and never exercises and still lives to be 100 years old while I’m eating right and struggling with my health?
• How come I work hard and I just can’t get ahead while my godless neighbor drives a great car, has 2 homes, buys whatever he wants and is taking his 4^th vacation this year?

Why does God allow ungodly men to prosper while the righteous are struggling? It doesn’t seem fair.

Let’s take a look at our text. This section of scripture has a bit of a sarcastic tone to it. It is intentionally overstated for emphasis. Keep that in mind as you read. Asaph is speaking about his observations about the ungodly and he says in verse 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.

The ungodly seem to live lives full of this world’s pleasure and then when it is time to die, there are no long and tedious sicknesses for them. They die with ease. They live “high on the hog” and then just slip away.

⁶ Therefore pride is their necklace;
violence covers them as a garment.

They are pompous, boastful, arrogant jerks. They brag about their achievements. They bully weaker people. They operate in the arena of intimidation. They use their power to take advantage of others and enjoy doing it. They are violent men who put their violence on display like they are wearing it as a shirt. It is a sport for them to destroy people on the way to the top. Why are they prospering?

⁷ Their eyes swell out through fatness;
their hearts overflow with follies.

In other words, they are gluttons and drunks. They are so overweight that their eyes are almost swollen shut with fat and these people know no moderation when it comes to alcohol and parties. Why are they prospering?

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.

These men work their employees to death and then they poke fun at God. They only think of themselves as having any real worth. They treat other people like trash while they are exalting themselves. Why are they prospering?

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.

It grieved Asaph to see the enemies of God so high and God’s people so low. When God’s people begin to encounter persecution, God does not seem to be altering His provision for them. Does God not see what is going on? God continues to discipline and correct His people while the enemies of God live lives of indulgence. This was all fuel for Asaph to have a pity party.

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.

Based on his perspective on the luxury of the ungodly, Asaph drew a huge wrong conclusion about righteousness. He concluded that all his righteousness was a huge waste of time. Why do I bother being righteous if God’s not going to give me the things that I want?

Spurgeon said, “if earthly goods were of much value, the lord would not give so large a measure of it to those who have the least of His love.” Worldly thinking needed to be rooted out of Asaph’s mind – especially if he was going to continue being a worship leader in the temple.

We don’t serve God in order to get more stuff. Our first question, when it comes to serving our King, should never be, “what’s in it for me?” God will root out a “what’s in it for me” attitude if it is present in your heart or in my heart when we try to serve Him as King. That wrong attitude was hindering Asaph and God was exposing it and dealing with it for Asaph’s good and for His Glory.

Serving God is not about you or me. Serving God is about God. God is so infinitely valuable that He is worthy of our service no matter how difficult it is and no matter what He allows to come into our lives as a result.

Asaph knew there was something wrong in his attitude when came to the Temple, so he went quiet. That was wise. How would the younger or weaker believers in the temple respond if one of the worship leaders was subjecting himself to his own worldly desire for prosperity while publically questioning God’s goodness? He rightly said (verse 15)

¹⁵ If I had said, “I will speak thus,”
I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

God revealed this sin in Asaph’s heart. Asaph went quiet and he went to the temple to spend time with the Lord in worship. Not as a worship leader this time, but as one of God’s people who was struggling with sin.

Communion with God Puts Our Circumstances in the Right Perspective

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.

I’m not exactly sure what happened that day in the temple, but when God is present among His people, it is an awesome experience. I have a few guesses as to what may have happened:

• Perhaps as a musician, his heart was stirred while God’s people were whole-heartedly singing truths about God in the congregation
• Perhaps he saw the blood of the sheep that had been slaughtered as payment for sin and he was reminded of his own wretchedness and God’s holiness.
• Perhaps the priest gave an anointed sermon about God’s judgment on the wicked in Noah’s time or about the afflictions of Job or about God’s wrath on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and it brought him to a fresh understanding that the value of our lives is not measured by what we have, but rather by the depth of our relationship to the God who we serve.

Asaph, in this moment of Spiritual redirection, was made freshly aware that even if ungodly men have an abundance right now, they are spiritually bankrupt. Ungodly men have a miserable end.

Ungodly Men have a Miserable End

Brad Penner is one of our elders. He’ll be here to teach for me in a few weeks while I’m away on vacation. He made this statement a couple of years ago that absolutely blew me away. I had never thought about this truth before. He said that Jesus didn’t come to save us from Satan. Then what did He come to save us from? Our flesh maybe? No, Jesus didn’t come to save us even from ourselves. We don’t need to be saved from Satan. Do you know who we need to be saved from? Do you know why we need salvation? We need to be saved from God. We need to be saved from God’s wrath.

These are men who have found themselves in dangerous positions. Their wealth and prosperity has not given them real security. No! In fact, their false hope and false security found in prosperity only masks the fact that they are on a slippery ledge and are perched dangerous over eternal judgment.  They are almost ready to fall off into everlasting ruin. Look at verse 18

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.

Do you see that we need to be saved not from Satan’s deception but from God’s wrath? Asaph’s pity for himself began to turn into genuine sorrow for the lost. Instead of in self-pity asking God why the ungodly prosper, he is now in sorrow turning to God and asking how the ungodly can be saved.

Their prosperity was masking their desperate need to be saved from the wrath of God. Their wealth was not a blessing. It was a curse. They were on slippery places. Their position in eternity was unbelievably dangerous. They are living on the razor’s edge.

Asaph realized that the prosperity of the ungodly is not a true picture of who they really are. These are not men who are protected by God. These are men who God despises as Phantoms. “Phantoms” can mean that He despises their image or their likeness. The Hebrew word for Phantoms (Tselem – Sell -em) can also mean God despises them like a tumor, or like mice or like the heathen gods. (I wouldn’t say it if the psalms didn’t clearly state it).

Being envious of the ungodly for their prosperity is like if we were envious of cattle. Cattle enjoy many luxuries that we desire

• They have no real responsibilities
• They don’t have to go to work
• They eat all day long.
• They sleep whenever they like
• Some even live in really beautiful places

Why don’t we envy cattle if they get to live such easy lives? We don’t envy them because they are ultimately destined for the slaughterhouse. They have a miserable end.

If we go over to the New Testament, 1 John 2:17 says, “¹⁷ And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

God may give a measure of wealth, worldly success and prosperity to believers. As American Christians, we all have some measure of wealth. BUT wealth does not indicate God’s blessing. Wealth is very temporary and it often masks our desperate need for God. Wealth can be spiritually dangerous.

Some people who dream of being wealthy and pursue it all their lives, will find out that wealth without a relationship with God, is not a dream but a nightmare. This new perspective drives Asaph to repentance and brings about a totally new attitude…

²¹ When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
²² I was brutish (insensitive) and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.

What does a beast do? A beast lives for today with no thought of tomorrow. My dog, Rusty, is not concerned with a relationship with God. He does not live with eternity in mind. He is not burdened with the eternal destiny of the other dogs at the dog park. He has no concept of God or of eternity. There is no thought of heaven and Hell for Rusty. He lives for today. He lives to maximize his pleasure. His greatest pleasure comes from belly rubs and plastic bones. He is a beast and that is what beasts do.

Asaph is saying that he was living more like a dog than like a godly man when he was so preoccupied with prosperity. When Asaph realized the nature of his behavior, it was a terribly humbling experience for him

One of the things that separates us from the animals is that we have a consciousness of God. We can live with eternity in mind. We feel a burden to reach those who are still facing the wrath of God.

There might be a question in your mind right now that I want to address: Why would we want to draw near to a God whose wrath is poured out against sinners? You don’t usually try to get close to the person who is handing out the punishment. There are two immediate reasons that it is wise to draw near to God:

1. All the pleasure we are seeking to find in the temporary, fading, broken things of this world can be perfectly found in God alone. He is the treasure of infinite worth!

The good life has nothing to do with wealth, power, status or pleasure. Ungodly people try to impress each other with these things in order to attract admirers. But, all the status symbols in the world pale in comparison to a relationship with the living God

2. The same God who judges mankind has also sacrificially provided a way to save mankind through His son Jesus Christ. The judge offers salvation. The God who punishes eternally also offers eternal pleasures at his right hand. The one who casts down the wicked also sustains the righteous.

Jonathon Edwards said, “There is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose this morning, but the God has held you up”

Righteous Men are Given Eternal Rewards

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.

This world is filled with pits and snares. It is much easier to fall into a hole of sin than it is to climb the hill of righteousness. God’s people are just visitors in the world. We are strangers. We are just passing through. We need a guide so that we won’t fall into a dark pit – like the pit of prosperity or the pit of envy.

God is offering to be our guide. The same God who judges sin will also keep us from sin. AND then, the same God who gives us the power to avoid the pitfalls of sin will rewards us for staying on the uphill path of righteousness.

How are we guided? Primarily by His word! We know for sure what the path of righteousness looks like by looking at God’s Word. This is why we push reading God’s word so heavily at our church. This is why our midweek Bible studies have some homework involved. We want you to be in the Word and be people of the Word so that you are on the path of righteousness so that you can receive a full measure of whatever blessings God has in store for you.

After all our labor and striving and hard work, He is the one who will receive us into glory forever. God does not just save us so that we can have more stuff. He’s not saving us just so that we might have eternal possessions.

He saves us so that we can have Him. He is the greatest treasure. He sent Jesus so that we can know God. He is a God who desires to be known and who wants to have a vibrant relationship with you and me. Heaven is only heaven because it is a place where we can know God and be with Jesus His Son.

God Himself is the Infinitely Valuable Treasure

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.

• What of value would we have in heaven if we didn’t have God?
• Is real lasting joy possible outside of an eternal relationship with God?
• Would heaven be glorious if it was devoid of God’s presence?
• Would there be any lasting enjoyment of the banquets of the streets of gold if God was not there?

Heaven without God would be nothing but an eternal valley of tears and sorrow. Heaven is not heaven unless it is a place where we can enjoy God forever. God is the most valuable treasure – greater than any treasure found in all of the universe. The presence of God is exactly what makes heaven paradise!

When Asaph comes to the fresh realization that God is his greatest treasure, he has a renewed reason and revitalized passion to worship. He also has a renewed burden for those who are perishing. Hell is close to those who are perishing but God is near to those who follow hard after Him.

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.

Life Application

When Asaph’s time of communion with God had ended, God had done a powerful work in Asaph’s heart. His feet were grounded once again in the infinite glory and worth of His Lord and King. He saw once again how desirable and glorious God is and was now once again ready to declare His praises.

I want to end by talking to two groups of people

Group #1

Maybe you came in today and you are frustrated because life just doesn’t seem fair. You might even be depressed about it. I hope that through today’s teaching you’ve come to the powerful realization that even if we are stripped of every luxury and pleasure of this fallen world, we have a glorious inheritance waiting for us that is beyond compare.

We have riches in God that are really not fair. We don’t deserve them. He is our great treasure. If we have Him, we have more than enough. Instead of being envious of other peoples belongings, let turn to God with grateful hearts and thanks Him for every blessing that He has bestowed upon us!

Group #2

Maybe you’ve come today and today’s teaching has made it clear to you that you really don’t have a relationship with God. You are valuing the creation over the creator but you’d like to change that. You’d like to begin a relationship with the Living God. After church today, there will be a couple men up front who would love to pray with you and help you to express your desire to begin a new relationship with the Living God

“The best way to stay on the path that God blesses is through intentional, meaningful time spent in His Word.”

Teaching Outline

Sometimes Godly Men have Doubts v.1-3

Ungodly Men are Often Prosperous v.4-15

Communion with God Puts Our Circumstances in the Right Perspective v. 16-17

Ungodly Men have a Miserable End v. 18-22, 1 John 2:17

Righteous Men are Given Eternal Rewards v. 23-24

God Himself is the Infinitely Valuable Treasure v.25-28