FRIDAY 13th
Psalm 73
NIV (vv25-26) – ‘Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’
ESV (vv25-26) – ‘Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’
We are in the same psalm as yesterday, and the psalmist is rejoicing in the protection that he has known from God, in verse 23 he says, ‘I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.’ You can only hold someone’s hand if you are with them and close to them, and we can only hold God’s hand if we are with him and close to him. And the psalmist who we are told in the heading is Asaph is meditating upon the goodness and the faithfulness of God who has been with him, holding his hand as he has walked through his troubles and at the same time has kept him from falling, guiding him with counsel (v24) As a result he knew he was safe and would one day be received in glory (v24). If we too want to one day be found in glory then we need to keep hold of the hand of God and allow him to guide us, to counsel us and to keep us from falling. Asaph then makes the declaration in our text, ‘Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.’ In other words, he was satisfied with God, satisfied with the things of God, and satisfied with the ways of God, nothing else would satisfy him or could ever meet the deepest longings of his heart. What a place to be found in, a place of contentment and a place of satisfaction, which also would have been a place of peace. He concludes in verse 28 ‘But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the LORD God my refuge, that I may tell of your works.’ In his letter to the Philippians 3:8-11 Paul expresses his desire to be completely satisfied with God and God alone, he counts everything else as dung, and we too need to make Him our hearts sole desire, ‘Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.’