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I heard a sermon last Sunday on Psalm 73. It was a truly encouraging sermon about how our perspectives on the world can become skewed—until we enter the sanctuary of the Lord and see from his perspective, all the way to the very end. The congregation was well instructed in the theme and shape of this psalm, which presents a skewed perspective in the first half but then gains a heavenly perspective in the second.

The preacher paused on verse 15, which I had not thought about enough in previous readings. This verse concludes the psalm’s first section and prepares us for the “But” that follows:

If I had said, “I will speak thus,”

I would have betrayed the generation of your children. (Ps. 73:15)

The speaker (Asaph) evidently realizes the harm that could have been done by voicing his bitterness concerning God’s apparent unfairness in prospering the ungodly and letting the godly suffer. In speaking such thoughts, Asaph would thereby have “betrayed” or treacherously deceived all the ones whom he was responsible to lead in godly thinking and living. As the temple’s choral director, Asaph surely influenced many, both privately and publicly, in their views of God.

Public Ramifications of Personal Struggles

Asaph’s comment here might stimulate a number of responses. First, we might protest that he did indeed speak these thoughts—or, at least, he put them into words, words that continue to echo even today as the people of God read them. Of course he did not pursue them further at this point; rather, his words immediately take a turn in a godly direction. Asaph’s phrase, “I will speak thus,” implies an unqualified and publicly expressed adherence to this ungodly perspective—counting, declaring it as true. It is a good thing that Asaph articulated his struggles and questions on the way to articulating how they were resolved.

It is worth pondering that Asaph here stops to consider the public ramifications of his personal struggles. These struggles are not all about him and the well-being of his own soul. We often celebrate the psalms as personal heart cries of God’s people, and so they are. This psalm (like so many psalms) gives expression to the most personal spiritual struggles. We find in this prayer book of generations past the articulation of so many of our fears, our oppression of soul, our cries for deliverance from the deepest kinds of pits. And yet the Psalms are not only the prayer book of generations past; they are the hymn book and the worship book as well—which reminds us of the crucial context of corporate worship in which these psalms are meant to be received.

Worship Sets Us Straight

This really seems to be the point of this psalm: that coming from our solitary struggles into the place where we worship God with the people of God sets us straight. Not only is Asaph’s skewed sense of the world adjusted here; he also regains a sense of his identity not as one suffering individual but as a member of God’s eternal family, responsible to God and to that family. God means his family to grow through one generation passing on the truths of God to the next. As we consider the import of Psalm 73:15, we might even say that the most glaring implication of Asaph’s turning away from his wrongheaded thinking is that to have pursued it would have been to “betray the generation of your [God’s] children.” Asaph understands that our individual struggles are not all about us; they are meant to grow us so that we can not only know God better but also help others know him better—so that God’s family will grow.

Sitting there in church, I wondered whether this psalm would be so satisfyingly symmetrical (as the psalms’ poetry so often is) as to conclude not just its first but also its second section with this broadening of focus—from me, to me, as a bridge to others. I peeked ahead. Yes! The second section’s last verse incorporates the same movement outward (and even the same Hebrew verb saphar, which connotes counting, declaring, or even celebrating), with the final stretch of that third parallel line:

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. (Ps. 73:28)

Both sections end by showing the ramifications of my soul’s health for the health and growth of God’s family. Neither section lets me stay alone and silent in my own soul; both move from the state of my soul to how that state is expressed in words to others. I do not mean to say that my own or anybody else’s personal struggles are not ever so important and crucial. But I do mean to say that Scripture repeatedly calls us to see a bigger picture, a picture of a God who is in the process of drawing generations of people to himself, through his Son. The center of the story is that Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the kingdom of people he is building for his own glory.

Psalm 73, like so many of the psalms, stretches our perspectives in all kinds of ways. Asaph’s words can make us yearn to see God rightly in the midst of our struggles, not just for our own well-being but ultimately for God’s glory, which means the prospering of God’s kingdom. We are not all responsible for the kind of leadership Asaph had. But we are all responsible not to betray the generation of God’s children—in fact, to tell rightly of all God’s works so that God’s family will grow and prosper. Praise God for the outward symmetry of Psalm 73!

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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