God Is My Strength and Portion Forever

                                                                         Psalm 73:1-15

 July 14, 2022

 

God Is My Strength and Portion Forever

A Psalm of Asaph.

Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.  But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.  For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek.  They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Why Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.  Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies.  They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.  They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.  Therefore his people turn back to them and find no fault in them. And they say, “How can God know?  Is there knowledge in the Most High?”  Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.  All in vain, I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.   For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.  If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children

 

You may have wondered who Asaph was, and so did I and this is what I found when I googled it.  “Psalm 73 follows this pattern as it puts forth the wisdom of the author, Asaph. This man was a director of music in the temple worship during the period of King David and is identified as a prophet in 2 Chron. 29:30. He is credited as the author of 11 Psalms, all lamenting”  You will also find him talked about in 1 Chronicle 16.

 

Now you and I who are in Christ need to be on guard, that like Asaph we do not envy the arrogant and the prideful in their prosperity.   He gives us a very clear understanding of the prideful and the arrogant, they are wicked, so you and I need to guard our hearts and minds to not allow pride and arrogance into our lives.  I do my best to be transparent with my readers, and as I lay in that hospital bed I had time to examine myself and it became clear to me that I was both prideful and arrogant in the area of my health, almost eighty, and was still working like a 50-year-old.  But God has a way of getting your attention, and when you drop from 158 lbs. to 126.6 lbs. and are so weak you need help doing just about everything, you understand how much God has blessed your life and how little you were involved.  The same thing can be true for many who believe they are self-made men or women.  That is the greatest lie, God gave you the skills, the understanding, and the abilities to accomplish all that has been achieved, so be thankful and not prideful and arrogant.

 

A crude way of saying this is they believe their stuff does not stink.  Or we could quote Asaph “Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.  Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies.  They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.  They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.”

 

If we, the Church would awaken to this understanding that  Asaph had;   “For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.  If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children.”

 

The culture we live in today would like us to change, to forget our history, and especially that a  man cannot have a baby.  Our Father, in all His wisdom, knew that if a man had a womb and was able to carry a child they would not have any children, for they would never have been able to handle the pain of childbirth.  No God makes man the provider, protector, and leader in the family, but even many who have entered into Christ are dropping the ball in this area.  God has told him to love his wife and to treat her as something precious, treasured by the husband.  Never do we find in Scripture the wife being told to love her husband, but to honor him, to show respect, and yes, even when the dude is being a jerk.

 

And what about parenting, your main job is to teach them to honor God, that is not done if you and your mate do not live it in front of them.  And has God not taught you to train them in the right living, by honoring those over them, my parents did a great job, teaching us to respect anyone who had authority over us, like teachers, policemen, and women.  I have no doubt that the main problem we have is the lack of parenting, not the little tyrant many are producing.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice