When my heart was in a ferment, and I was pricked in my reins,
In Psalm 73 a believer almost loses his faith. Asaph watched the wicked prosper while he suffered. Then he went into the sanctuary, God's dwelling place. There the light turned from the wicked back onto him. By verse 21 the question is what his own bitter feelings had made of him.
The verse names two inner places: the soul, and the heart. Older translations read the second word as the "reins," or kidneys. Writers treat that word as the seat of a person's deepest feelings:
The kidneys are the seat of the feelings (Ps. 73:21; Prov. 23:16; Lam. 3:13).
So the trouble was not on the surface. It sat where a person feels most deeply.
In the sanctuary Asaph had already seen how the wicked end. Verse 21 shows him something he did not go looking for: what was in his own heart.
He has seen the true character and end of the wicked. He has found the government of God at work beneath the things he can see. Now he must look beneath his outward walk and ways and learn the secrets of his own heart (verses 21, 22). The searching comes closer to home. If the sanctuary exposes the character of the sinner, it will also uncover the hidden springs of evil in the heart of a saint. The light of the sanctuary lays everything bare.
Asaph went in for an answer about the wicked. He came out with a verdict on himself.
He got an overwhelming sense of his own foolishness. He went in as a chief singer and an intelligent man. Once inside, he very soon found himself to be like a beast without understanding in the presence of God.
This is not one bad man's private experience. The closer a person lives to God, the more he sees it:
The people who have most clearly shown the character of God's saints have felt their own nothingness and foolishness most deeply. The more we live in front of other people, or even among our fellow believers, the less we feel it. The more we live in the presence of God, the more we feel it.
The comparison to an animal is not an insult about intelligence. It describes a mind that works only from what the eyes can see:
The animal acts without the slightest reference to God. The saint has to admit something. If he leaves God out of his thoughts, he will not only sink below what is proper to a natural man, but he will fall to the level of a beast.
That way of thinking then shows itself in how a person lives:
Before he went in he was a miserable and restless man, and as ignorant as a beast, as he afterwards confessed. He understood nothing, and everything appeared wrong. His whole soul was in rebellion against the way things were, and so against God, who is behind everything. This is the subtle and serious thing about judging life by our natural powers. The man who does so, whether he is a Christian or an unbeliever, becomes a discontented man and a grumbler. Nothing offends God like those two things, for they show a soul at war with the will of God.
Asaph writes verse 21 in the past tense. He is looking back at the bitterness, and he finds that God never let go of him:
We are never more ready to learn the goodness of God's heart than when we have discovered the badness of our own. Finding out what is in us opens the way for God to reveal what is in Him. So he can say, "I was like a beast toward You. Nevertheless, I am continually with You." Hot and bitter thoughts were raging in his heart. Even then, God's care for him never tired. He says, in effect, "God was out of my thoughts, but I was never out of His thoughts."
- Soured. The bitterness sat in the deepest part of Asaph. The older word "reins," the kidneys, means the seat of the feelings. The damage was inside him, not in his circumstances.
- Exposed. The sanctuary first showed him the end of the wicked. Then it showed him the hidden springs of evil in his own heart. One light does both.
- Brutish. To judge life only by what the eye sees is to act "without the slightest reference to God." A chief singer of Israel found himself at that level.
- Restless. That way of judging life makes a person discontented and full of complaints — a soul at war with the will of God.
- Held. The confession is in the past tense for a reason. While hot thoughts raged, he was never out of God's thoughts. Learning the badness of our own heart is how we come to learn the goodness of His.
Then I was brutish and knew nothing; I was [as] a beast with thee.
Asaph went into God's presence with a question about why the wicked prosper, and came out with a verdict about himself. This verse is his confession: a gifted man admits that his thinking had sunk to the level of an animal's.
Asaph says this in the sanctuary — God's dwelling place, where he had gone for answers. What he found there was not what he came for.
But Asaph got more than the answer to his problem when he went into the sanctuary. It was something quite different, we suspect, from anything he expected. He got an overwhelming sense of his own foolishness. He went in as a chief singer and an intelligent man. But once inside, he very soon found himself to be like a beast without understanding in the presence of God.
The light of the sanctuary does not stop with the sinner. It reaches into a believer's own heart.
If the sanctuary exposes the character of the sinner, it will also discover the hidden springs of evil in the heart of a saint. All is laid bare in the light of the sanctuary. "When my soul was embittered," he says, "I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward You." The brute beast acts with no reference to God at all. The saint is brought to admit that if he leaves God out of his thoughts, he will not only sink below what is proper to a natural man; he will fall to the level of a beast.
"Beast" is not a throwaway insult. The word has a settled sense, and the same Hebrew word is translated "brutish" in other places.
The beast stands for the ignorance of man in Ps. 73:22. It also stands for his acting like a creature without reason — that is, without conscience before God. The word is beir, translated 'brutish' in Ps. 94:8 and Jer. 10:8.
Asaph then turns that word on himself.
He realizes that his attitude had been like that of a beast, moved only by instinct and not by the reasoning power that ought to characterize a man.
You might expect the holiest people to think best of themselves. The opposite is true, and the reason is where they spend their time.
We dare to say that no one can ever know what God's presence is really like without making the same painful discovery. The people who have most clearly borne the character of God's saints have felt their own nothingness and foolishness most deeply. The more we live before other people, or even among fellow believers, the less we realize it. The more we live as in the presence of God the more we realize it.
This condition is common; noticing it is not. And noticing it is God's own work in a person.
Sadly, this is the real condition of people in general, but few see it. The man who does see it feels it so deeply and so personally that he appears in his own eyes more ignorant than anyone else. It is a similar principle when Paul speaks of himself as the chief of sinners. And this is the real evidence that the Spirit of God is at work in a man's soul, showing him the darkness he has been living in.
Something held Asaph back from saying his doubts out loud. That restraint shows what was really in him.
He had been foolish, ignorant — "as a beast," so he says, "before God"; yet there had been integrity and conscience. He was half ready to say that godliness was no use. If he had let his thoughts run loose, he would have wronged the family of God's children. This checked him. How beautiful to see these holy affections at work in the middle of man's wayward will. This conscience — the fear of putting a stumbling block in the path of the weakest of God's children — checks the heart and shows where the affections really are.
The verse does not end the psalm. Once Asaph has hit bottom about himself, God can start teaching him something better.
Never are we more ready to learn the goodness of His heart than when we have discovered the badness of our own hearts. The discovery of what is in us opens the way for the revelation of what is in Him... He can say, "I was like a beast toward You. Nevertheless, I am continually with You." When hot and bitter thoughts were raging in his heart, he was still the object of God's tireless care. He says, as it were, "God was out of my thoughts, but I was never out of His thoughts."
- Sanctuary — Asaph went in asking about the wicked. He came out judging himself. God's presence exposes the saint's heart, not only the sinner's.
- Beast — the word means ignorance, and acting like a creature with no conscience before God. Instinct takes over where reason should rule.
- Nearness — the closer you live to God, the smaller you look to yourself. Living before people hides the discovery.
- Integrity — even while his thoughts ran wild, conscience stopped him from tripping up God's weaker children. That showed where his heart really was.
- Nevertheless — finding out what is in us opens the way to see what is in Him. God was out of Asaph's thoughts, but Asaph was never out of God's.
Nevertheless I am continually with thee thou hast holden my right hand;
Asaph, who wrote this psalm, has just admitted that his bitter thoughts about the wicked left him ignorant and brutish before God. Then one word turns everything: nevertheless. The man who almost slipped finds that God held him the whole time.
The word joins what Asaph found in himself to what he found in God.
But God did not leave Asaph to grovel before Him as a beast. Along with this crushing sense of his own folly and ignorance, he got a sight of the grace and glory of God. "Nevertheless," he says, "I am continually with You: You have held me by my right hand." Despite all that he was, and all he had learned about himself, God took him by his right hand. He lifted him up and set him always in His own high company. This was astonishing grace.
Asaph did not reason this out in his distress. He learned it in one place, and learned there how to take his troubles.
But all must learn this where the Psalmist did, in the sanctuary. And there we learn to welcome God's correction, not only to recognise it.
"Continually" covers the bad stretch too — the bitter thoughts, the comparisons with the wicked, the near-slip.
Never are we more ready to learn the goodness of His heart than when we have discovered the badness of our own hearts. So the Psalmist's thoughts move away from all that he had been before God, to delight in all that God was for him. He can say, "I was as a beast before You, nevertheless I am continually with You." When hot and bitter thoughts were raging in his heart, even then he was the object of God's unwearied care. He says, as it were, "God was out of my thoughts, but I was never out of His thoughts" — "I am continually with You."
Two hands appear in the psalm: the one that almost gave way, and the one that never did. These writers quote an older translation throughout: here it reads "You have held me by my right hand," where the ESV has "you hold my right hand."
He not only had a place in the heart of God. God's hand also held him, for he can say, "You have held me by my right hand." I wandered, I behaved like a brute, I let go of His hand, but never did He let go of mine. I nearly slipped — yes, truly, I should have slipped altogether — but He held me by my right hand. His heart of love set me as an object before Him, and His hand of power held me fast.
That grip held while Asaph was moving toward the edge, and it did more than stop a fall.
He was drawing nearer and nearer to the edge of that terrible cliff. Many a mighty man has fallen over it never to rise again. Yet his hand was in the grasp of the almighty God, who had determined that not a hair of his head would perish… Then the blessed God, who held him in the grasp of love, drew him near to Himself in the sanctuary. There, in a moment, he learned the awful distance to which unbelief had carried him.
Earlier in the psalm Asaph complained that he was struck all day long while the wicked went untouched. Verse 23 gives him the reason.
Suppose the wicked are "not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued as other men." Suppose that I, on the other hand, can say, "all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning." Here is the meaning of it: "I am continually with You; You have held me with Your right hand." What a blessed reason! What a glorious compensation!… The presence of the Holy One with us must mean discipline; but it is a Father's discipline of the "son in whom He delights."
God did the holding, not Asaph. So the rest of the road rests on the same hand.
He learned with great delight all that God had been for him in the past, in the day when his feet had almost slipped. So he can look forward with complete confidence to all that God will be for him in the future. He can say at every step of the pilgrim journey, "You shall guide me with Your counsel." I need not weary my heart trying to unravel all the puzzling questions of my path through this evil world. God Himself will guide me. And at last, when the journey ends, when man's small day is done and the day of glory dawns, "You will receive me."
- Nevertheless — one word sets what Asaph was against what God is. Finding the badness of his own heart opened the way to learn the goodness of God's.
- Continually — the nearness had no gaps. God was out of Asaph's thoughts, but Asaph was never out of God's.
- Held — he let go; God did not. Love set him before Him, and power kept him from the fall he would otherwise have taken.
- Chastened — the blows he resented were proof of the same nearness. Being with the Holy One means discipline, and it is a Father's discipline.
- Guided — the hand that held him through his worst thinking will guide him now and receive him at the end.
Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel, and after the glory, thou wilt receive me.
Asaph almost lost his footing over the prosperity of the wicked. This verse is where his recovery lands: guidance now, and a welcome at the end. Two questions follow: what guidance does God give, and where does it end?
The verse belongs to a man who has just been in God's presence and seen how both stories end:
In the light of the sanctuary everything became clear to him. He saw that the course of the godless rich, and the course of the plagued and downtrodden saints, could only be measured rightly once the end of each came into view. A few moments before, he had been near to falling himself, eaten up with envy at the prosperity of the wicked. Now he exclaims, "How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment!" Asaph himself was one of the godly, plagued all day long and "chastened every morning." Yet in the sanctuary he lifts his eyes to God with joy and confesses, "You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory." The end of the one: brought into desolation. The end of the other: received to glory. The contrast is complete!
Guidance by counsel goes beyond being held up. God steers people who are out of touch with Him too, but they do not know it at the time. The quote below follows an older rendering: "You will guide me by your counsel."
Up to this point, through all his shortcomings in faith, he could say, "You have held me." Now, in communion, he says, "You will guide me by your counsel." That is more than being held up without knowing it. It is the mind and will of God guiding us in communion. So it appears once he has judged himself and is in communion. God still guides us when we are out of communion. He makes us go according to His own counsels, holding our mouths with bit and bridle. But then the soul does not understand it. It cannot speak, as here, in the knowledge that He is guiding by His counsel.
The practical result is that the believer is released from the strain of solving life's puzzles by himself.
He can say at every step of the pilgrim journey, "You will guide me with your counsel." There is no need for me to wear out my heart trying to unravel all the puzzling questions of my path through this evil world, for God Himself will guide me. And at last, when the end of the journey is reached, when man's small day is done and the day of glory dawns, "You will receive me."
Just before this verse Asaph confessed he was like a beast before God. What follows is all grace, and the guidance is part of that grace.
But Asaph was not left grovelling before God as a beast. Along with this overwhelming sense of his own folly and ignorance, he got a sight of the grace and glory of God. "Nevertheless," he says, "I am continually with you: you have held me by my right hand." Despite all that he was, and all he had learned about himself, God took him by his right hand. He lifted him up and set him always in His majestic company. This was astonishing grace. But grace also set glory before him, and undertook to give him guidance on his way to the glory.
The same three-fold pattern reappears, enlarged, in the New Testament:
These things were true for Asaph; they are far more true for us. Grace, guidance and glory for a man who discovered himself to be like a beast before God! That is the Old Testament story. The New Testament story is like it, only it goes further. Titus 2:11-13 gives an even more wonderful account of grace going on to glory. In between, God grants guidance, so that we live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present world.
Commentators differ over the second half of the verse. Many read it as the believer's reception into glory at the end of the journey. One writer asks whether the psalm sets out to teach that at all:
Here we read these words, a favourite text with many: "You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory." It may be good Christian doctrine. But is it the aim of the psalm to teach anything of the sort? Let us be subject to Scripture. You see that the word "to" is added. Why? Adding "to" or "with" would need authority. It cannot be put in or left out like this. The truth is that our translators did not understand the words as they stand. They also took it for granted that the psalm speaks directly of our Christian comfort.
On that reading the difference is one of timing, and it marks off two distinct groups of God's people:
Psalm 73:24 needs another correction: "You guide me with your counsel, and after the glory you will receive me." Zechariah 2:8 translates the same phrase rightly. This is a very important difference. It shows that the saints who use this psalm will understand their position as sharers in the blessings on earth when the Lord reigns. Their calling is earthly, ours is heavenly. The Lord will receive us before the glory (1 Thessalonians 4); they after it has appeared.
- Sanctuary — The puzzle only clears in God's presence, where the end of both the wicked and the godly comes into view.
- Grace — The man who has just called himself a beast is the man God holds by the right hand. Everything in this verse follows from that.
- Guidance — Counsel is guidance the soul understands, in communion. Out of communion, God still steers, but with bit and bridle.
- Glory — Grace begins the road and glory ends it, and God gives guidance in between. Titus 2:11-13 shows the same pattern.
- Timing — Commentators differ on the last words. Some read "receive me to glory." Others read "after the glory you will receive me" — an earthly hope, not the heavenly one.
Whom have I in the heavens? and there is none upon earth I desire beside thee.
Psalm 73 opens with a believer almost losing his footing over the prosperity of the wicked. Verse 25 is where he turns: a man who once envied other people's lives now wants nothing but God.
This is not the psalm's opening mood. Trouble produced it, and it came clear only in the sanctuary — God's dwelling place.
In the sanctuary of God, where His mind was revealed, all became plain. The godly man complains that he lacked divine sense in these thoughts and feelings. Still, after all, he was always before God, and God's right hand upheld him. God's counsel guided him through that time of darkness, and God will receive him when the glory appears. The result is blessed. He has none in heaven but the Lord, none on earth whom he desires beside Him: such is the effect of trial.
The recovery ends in worship.
And it was even so, for he breaks out into worship, the worship of a mind at rest and a heart satisfied. "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you." God became his present and everlasting portion.
The verse names no gift. It names a Person.
We had precious promises in the previous section. Here we have a precious portion. Word for word, the Hebrew says: "My portion is Jahweh…" We are not talking about blessings, or promises, but about a Person! Many Christians are so occupied with the blessings that they forget the Blesser. In the same way, many are so enthralled with their spiritual gifts that they ignore the Giver! Psalm 73:25 expresses it beautifully: "Whom have I in heaven…?" ("but you" is added in the King James Translation, but does not appear in the original).
The first half of the verse searches heaven itself — and finds nothing there apart from God.
Heaven itself is not a saint's reward. "Whom have I in heaven but you?"
Take that further: heaven's own joys would fall flat without God Himself.
If all the affections and joys of heaven were the portion of the soul, it would still be unhappy without God. There would be misery in heaven unless God were the portion of each one there. If the soul is taken up with coming glory, it needs to join to that glory the thought of God being its portion and its joy. Otherwise the glory itself would be too heavy a burden, for glory is a strange thing to us.
The second half of the verse answers the envy that opened the psalm. Wanting nothing else on earth is the opposite of coveting what the wicked hold.
The one who knows God in this way has found in God the satisfying portion of his soul. Not only is he an object to God, but now God becomes the one Object to him. He can say, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you." But what about the prosperity of the wicked, their riches and their ease which he once envied? "Oh," the Psalmist would say, "speak no more of those things. I have been into the sanctuary. I have learned the heart of God, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Him."
The verse is about desire, so it measures us. And this desire can never ask for too much.
As another has said, "We all have as much of Christ as we desire — no more and no less." Think of what the psalmist says: "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you." How searching this is. We cannot desire too much, and our greatest demands will never be disappointed. However much our capacity grows, it can never outgrow the greatness of the supply.
One writer points the verse straight to Christ. He meets both the conscience and the heart.
Such a soul will find everything in Christ, whom the world rejected and who is now risen and ascended. In Him is all that his conscience needs as a sinner, and all that his heart can desire as a believer. "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you."
- Trial — sorrow produced this confession, not comfort: "such is the effect of trial."
- Sanctuary — in God's presence the man saw how things end, and worship replaced envy.
- Person — what he found was not promises or gifts but a portion: the Blesser rather than the blessings.
- Heaven — searched and found empty apart from God; even glory would be a burden if God Himself were not the joy of it.
- Desire — the verse then measures us, because we hold as much of Christ as we want, and no demand we make is ever too large.
My flesh and my heart faileth God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever.
The man who wrote this psalm had envied the success of the wicked and almost slipped, until he went into the sanctuary of God. This line is not a boast about his own strength — it admits that he fails, and names what holds him when he does.
The psalm does not argue that a believer's strength holds out. It admits that strength gives way, and puts the weight somewhere else.
Heart and flesh fail; surely they do. God is the strength of my heart. He supports us with divine strength and goodness, and He sustains the heart. He is not only a present support but an everlasting portion — our portion for ever. This leads to a sweet and earnest conclusion. It is good for me to draw near to God. There we learn truth; there we find comfort.
Some translations read "rock" here instead of "strength." The picture is of a man who had nearly slipped, finding solid ground under his feet.
"I know it," the Psalmist seems to reply, "for I have learnt by bitter experience that my flesh and my heart fail. There was a time when my feet had nearly slipped. But I have been into the sanctuary and I have found a resting-place for my poor trembling heart. God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever." The heart that once envied the wicked has found its satisfying portion in the heart of God. The feet that had almost gone now stand firm on the rock.
That same reading carries a warmth that a word like "strength" alone might not suggest.
"The rock of my heart" — this points to something different from other pictures of a rock. It means our affections are involved: we love Him because He first loved us. The "rock of my heart" is the One who loves us with an unshakeable love, and whom we love — poorly, yes, but we do love, in response.
He had envied what the wicked owned. Set that beside what he owns, and the timescale settles the argument.
His flesh and his heart fail — experience had taught him that. Even so, he could say, "But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." What comparison is there between the few short years of his life and "forever"? It is the eternal issue that counts!
Knowing God this way does not solve the puzzle of why evil men prosper. It takes the sting out of watching them.
Gaining this heart-knowledge of Him, we find Him to be the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever. With God as our strength and portion we are no longer "envious of the arrogant," nor troubled because we see "the prosperity of the wicked." We can rejoice in God as our portion so fully that the apparent success of evil men no longer troubles us. That holds even though we do not know the solution to the problem their success creates.
There is a smaller way of holding God: treating Him as help for the trouble at hand, not as the One we want.
If my mind is fixed on present circumstances and difficulties, and on God helping me in them, the spring of joy is gone. I have made God the servant of my needs. The heart rests and settles there, and God sinks down into a mere help in time of trouble. It is true that "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1). But to bring Him down to only that changes the whole picture. He Himself is ours as our portion, and that cannot fail.
The confession sits in a chain of statements about what God does. It does not end with a comforted man sitting silent.
He knows me, He holds me, He guides me, and afterwards will receive me to glory. How much God is to him! There is none like Him in heaven or on earth. Flesh and heart may fail, but God will be the strength of his heart and his portion for ever. Nor is this all. While all who are far from God shall perish, the faithful one draws near to Him. He makes God his refuge, and has the privilege and joy of telling of all His works.
- Fail — the verse admits what we try to hide. Heart and flesh do give out, and commentators take that admission at face value.
- Rock — read as "rock of my heart," the line sets a man who nearly slipped on firm ground. The rock is a love that cannot be shaken, and that draws love back.
- Portion — God is not help for a hard patch. He is the possession itself, and shrinking Him to a help in trouble drains the joy away.
- Forever — the prosperity he envied lasts a few short years. His own portion lasts "forever," and that settles the comparison.
- Near — the result is not private relief only. Envy loses its grip, the soul draws near, and the mouth tells what God has done.