#DailyDevotion What We Think Is Evil Treatment, God Considers Good
Psalm 73 Surely God is good to Israel, to those whose hearts are pure.
Perhaps we should take this verse in reverse. Who is the God of Israel good to? He is good to those who are pure in heart. This means God is not good to everyone. He is not good to all the descendants of Jacob. This conforms well to Paul in Romans 9 who says it is not the physical descendants of Jacob who are Israel, but only those who are children of the promise. All people, of all nations, language, tribes and tongues who trust in the promises of God in Christ Jesus are pure in heart and who are God’s Israel.
Secondly, what does it mean for God to be good to them? As we read this Psalm, God being good to us isn’t what we would think it is. When God is being good to us, it isn’t necessarily having health, wealth, family, friends and peace in this world. He may give us moments of these things to give our spirits a rest. A rest from what you may ask? Trials, troubles, tribulations and everything else the world thinks of evil. Moses writes in Deut. 8, “5In your hearts learn this, that the LORD your God is training you like a man trains his son.” The author of Hebrews discusses this in chapter 12. If you are pure in heart, if you trust Jesus, if you are His disciple, then you will have to pick up your cross and follow Him. This means a life that is not easy. It is a life not necessarily marked by wealth, health, happiness, fun, and the like. All the things the world thinks are good. They hate God and reject Him when they do not have these things. We should not think the lack of these things the world deems good means God hates us, is angry with us or even worse, that we don’t have faith in God. You should be much more worried if everything is going fine with you and you have no trials, tribulations or troubles. If you are pure in heart and God’s Israel, God’s children, He will discipline you, train you like my football coach in 8th grade made us run and pushed us to the limits beyond what we thought we could ever endure. There’s a big game ahead of us and He is making sure we are prepared.
2But my feet almost slipped, and I almost lost my footing 3because I was jealous of those who are proud and saw how the wicked prosper.
Psalmist, seemingly forgetting how God is good to us, almost slips from his faith in God because he looks at the proud and wicked and how they prosper. Those who don’t trust God seem to have all the fun. They have health, wealth, family, friends, loved ones, good times and the like. It seems as if God is being good to them and hating us! A number of Christians don’t get to this Psalm apparently, so they hate God for how He treats them and thinks it is better if they don’t follow Christ at all. They are like those in Malachi 3 who say, “It’s useless to serve God. What did we get whenever we did what He wanted and walked in mourning before the LORD of armies? 15According to our experience people are happier if they forget about God, more successful if they do wrong.” It’s almost five hundred years between the Psalms and Malachi, yet people did not change between those years and they have not changed since Malachi.
We should beware lest we too forget the cross of Christ and join the wicked in all their ways. They have a very deceptive life as we will see later in this Psalm. When things are going wrong, we need to cling to God and Christ all the more. Turn to the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and know that through what seem like evil and wicked times for us will end for us in every blessing if we hold fast to faith in Christ and the hope of eternal life set before us.
Heavenly Father, we know You are the giver of every good and perfect gift. Your discipline may seem like evil and wickedness during our trials but You have promised blessings through them. Increase our faith and hope so that we may despair of Your promises and we may hold fast to them unto death. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.