Is there hope although "my flesh and my heart may fail" (Psalm 73:26)?

127 But this brings in another blessing. This endures. Heart and flesh fail; surely they do. God is the strength of my heart. He stays with divine strength and goodness and sustains the heart, and is not only a present stay, 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. He has put his trust in the Lord Jehovah, in One sovereign in power, abiding and faithful in promise. He who does will surely have to declare all His wondrous works. He will be in the place to see and experience them, have the heart to notice and understand them, the joy of testifying the faithfulness of One the heart has trusted. In verse 20 we have only sovereign power in the last verse, covenant faithfulness also.

But we may say, "You are evidently a poor weak thing in the midst of a world where all is against you." "I know it," the Psalmist seems to reply,"for I have learnt by bitter experience that my flesh and my heart fails, for time was when my feet had well nigh 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" (verse 26, margin). The heart that was once envious of the wicked has found its satisfying portion in the heart of God. The feet that were almost gone are firmly set upon the rock.

Well may the heart therefore look far above the present apparent circumstances to find its rest and contentment in the living God! "Whom have I in heaven but You?" This is surely clear and elementary for a believer, therefore it should follow, "There is none upon earth that I desire besides You" (v. 25). Though his flesh and his heart fail, as his experience had taught him, yet he could confidently 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"? Certainly it is the eternal issue that really counts!

Asaph had the same experience (Ps. 73): The wicked are prosperous, proud, and arrogant; they are scoffers; they deride God, and yet “They prosper in the world; they heap up riches” (Ps. 73:3-12)! He, Asaph, who has purified his heart, who has washed his hands in innocency, is experiencing daily trials. With painful mental exertion he endeavours to penetrate this mystery of the ways of God: “When I thought how to understand this, it was too painful for me – until I went into the sanctuary of God.” There the Lord gives an answer to His servant. Asaph now understands the end of the wicked. He experiences the constant presence of the Lord who has held his right hand. Trials have not ceased – “My flesh and my heart fail.” But he has the experiential knowledge that God is the rock of his heart and his portion forever: “There is none upon earth I desire beside you ... but as for me, it is good for me to draw near to God” (v.7-28).

He cannot go with these apostates; and yet his soul is in conflict. For a Jew with his covenanted blessings and the legal curses upon iniquity, hard indeed would it be, to understand this flourishing of the wicked, while the godly suffer, — a state of things not always simple to the Christian, who is taught to take up his cross and follow Christ. But if he does not understand, he draws nearer to God that he may do so. In the sanctuary of His presence the secret is disclosed: he sees the end that is coming for the wicked. The "smooth places" in which God sets them are not signs either of His favor or of His indifference. They are the prelude to an awful fall, which comes as in a moment, and they are brought to an end, consumed with terrors. Their prosperity, while it deceives them, is but the image of a dream; vanishing when men awake; — is but this, when the Lord arises and shows it as their folly and shame.

The psalmist turns from this to deplore his own folly in his having been so moved as he had been by this short-lived triumph. He owns it as the ignorance of a beast who leaves out God. After all, he cannot, in the face of faith's record through all generations, take the circumstances of the life here as giving cause to doubt that God is with him: circumstances which would plead against the "generation of His children" in every age. And that one thing realized, that after all God is with him, is the controlling circumstance: it may well stand in the place of all other good. Is it not this also which will account for chastening and humiliation, the fruit of the holiness of Him who has come to walk with this poor creature of His? But support cannot be wanting either, in such a case; and so he owns: "But I am continually with Thee; Thou hast holden my right hand." From this the whole future may be certainly predicted; for God can be fully reckoned upon. The way will be with Him, and the end too with Himself: "Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel; and afterwards in glory Thou wilt receive me." The face to face vision of God has been for faith necessarily, in every generation and under every dispensation, the end — short of which complete satisfaction cannot be found. The cry in the Psalms from end to end is after God. After Him the soul longs and pants, as the hart after the water-brooks. Its question is continually: "When shall I come and appear before God?" Here this is quietly contemplated with the reassured confidence which is the end of all faith's exercises at all times. Here is the abiding joy, the source of all that can be: "whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee! "Nature may fail, but this failing strength only reveals the might of that "strength," which "is made perfect in weakness." "God is the rock of my heart, the foundation upon which it builds, and my portion forever."

Many thus ensnared, the godly one expresses what he has felt. "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning" (13, 14). How natural this seems to one who knows anything of his own heart! But is it right thus to give way through contrasting one's lot with the flourishing wicked ones? No, says the Psalmist, it is not. He would not thus speak, great as might be the temptation. Were he really to do that, he would offend against the generation of God's children. But whence could light be got as to this perplexing matter — the ungodly prospering, whilst the saint was suffering? In the sanctuary of God he found it. There all was plain. He saw the end of the wicked. Henceforth all is clear to him (17). Those drawn aside looked only at the present. They saw the wicked prospering, and they were ensnared. The Psalmist sees the end of such men, and so is kept from casting in his lot with them.

How needful for all to remember this! Present appearances and circumstances may mislead. The future learnt from God can dispel the delusion (16-22). And whilst the wicked and their dupes may be saying, "Does God know?" etc., the Psalmist says, He does. He knows me, He holds me, He guides me, and afterward will receive me to glory. How much is God to him! None there is 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. Whilst all far from God shall perish, the faithful one draws nigh to Him. He makes Him his refuge, and has the privilege and joy of telling of all His works (23-28).

Let my efforts fail; let my arm yield; let my mind be filled with perplexity; let my strength and my heart faint and fail, “God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.”

But it was with Abraham as it is sometimes with us, that God tried his faith in a way that he never could have expected. Isaac was a son specially given to Abraham by divine promise in his old age; could he then possibly have anticipated that he would one day be suddenly called upon to give him back to God, by offering him up as a burnt-offering? Again, all the promises of God, both as to his descendants and the nations, were given in Isaac: "In Isaac shall thy seed be called;" and "in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Can it then be possible that God would have this one put to death? But the hoary-headed patriarch asks no questions. He knows that God's calls are imperative, and that His word must be implicitly obeyed; and when the man of faith was thus occupied with God, and accounting that He was able to raise him up again from the dead, he was strengthened at once to arise and obey every detail of direction for the accomplishment of His will. He knew that God is faithful, that He could not deny Himself, that the counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, and in some way or other all His own promises must be fulfilled. As on the occasion of Isaac's birth, "he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform;" so now He could go forth, "accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead." It was reckoning then entirely upon the faithfulness and almighty power of God, that enabled the heavy-hearted patriarch to go forth, step by step, according to the divine command in this time of deep affliction. The trial finding him as it did occupied with God, calm and happy in His presence, he went forth looking to God, walking step by step, and day by day, according to His bidding, believing that if his beloved Isaac were bound to the altar and killed, and consumed to ashes as a burnt-offering, that He was able to raise him up from the dead, and establish all His promises in him. This was the way of faith; hence we are told, "By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac," etc. It was not reckoning upon any arm or stratagem of the flesh, not brooding over circumstances, painful, most painful to nature as they must have been, but having to do with God, the living and true God. No doubt he felt his own weakness, and his feelings must have been acutely sensitive, every emotion of affection too put to its utmost stretch; but all this only the more earnestly cast him unreservedly upon God, and, like another, he might say, "My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever;" or again, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," for faith knows no other resource or confidence.

"My flesh and my heart faileth: God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever." (Ps 73:26 - JND)

Again the King James Version has something slightly different, but this is how it should read. The rock of my heart - I think that this implies something on a different level from the others we've mentioned. This implies that our affections are involved - we love Him because He first loved us. The "rock of my heart", the one who loves us with an unshakeable love and who we love, poorly- yes, but we do love, in response.

Gaining this heart-knowledge of Him we find Him indeed to be the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever. With God for our strength and portion we are no longer "envious at the foolish," nor troubled because we see "the prosperity of the wicked." It is possible, we believe, to be so rejoicing in God as our portion that we are no longer troubled at the apparent success of evil men, even though we do not know the solution of the problem created by their success. The God who works within us to such an end is a God who works wonders indeed.