When the Wicked Seem to Win

I want to ask you something that most churches do not give you much space to say out loud. Have you ever looked at the world -- at the people who seem to succeed through deception, who hold power without conscience, who prosper while good people suffer -- and felt something crack in your faith? Not doubt exactly. Something more like: is this fair? Is God actually paying attention? Is the righteous life actually worth it?

Asaph, the writer of Psalm 73, felt all of that. And he wrote it down. And God preserved it.

The Honest Accounting

Asaph spends the first half of this Psalm in a kind of grievance catalogue. The wicked have no struggles, their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens. They wear pride like a necklace. Violence drapes around them like a garment. They scoff and speak with malice. And they always increase in wealth.

Then comes the comparison that stings. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. What was the point? If the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer, the arithmetic of righteousness does not add up.

Asaph does not sanitize this. He says he almost slipped. He almost stopped believing. He was this close to concluding that the whole thing was worthless. And he is honest about that in a Psalm that has been read in public worship for three thousand years.

The Turning Point

He says in verse 17: until I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.

This is the hinge. He went into the presence of God and something happened to his perspective. Not his circumstances -- his perspective. He got the long view. He saw what he had been missing from the ground level.

From the ground, the wicked are prospering and the question is why God is allowing it. From inside the sanctuary -- from the place of God's perspective -- you can see where the road actually leads. The prosperity of the wicked is real, but it is temporary, and it is not the whole story. The paths they are on lead somewhere. And it is not where they think.

What the Sanctuary Gave Him

After the turning point, the Psalm becomes one of the most intimate in the whole Psalter. Yet I am always with you. You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

Notice the movement. He went into the sanctuary with a crisis of justice and came out with an encounter with a Person. He went in asking: is it worth it? He came out saying: earth has nothing I desire besides you. Something happened in that place that reoriented his desire away from the comparison and toward the God who had been with him through all of it.

My flesh and my heart may fail, he says, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Not: therefore I will never struggle again. Not: the question is now answered and the injustice is resolved. But: God is my portion. That is enough. It is more than enough. It is everything.