When Good Things Happen To Bad People

       You can’t turn on the television without seeing them.  You know who I mean.  They are the self anointed beautiful people.  The press thrives on their scandals.  They get caught with their hand in the cookie jar and everyone smiles.  Then they write a tell-all book and make another million. 

       If God is in charge and if God really is good, then why do people like this get away with so much?  Then there are the truly evil – the “not just annoying.”  Where is justice?

       That’s not a new question.  It’s a question as old as faith.  It’s the question asked 2,800 years ago by a psalmist named Asaph.

Listen to Psalm 73

       It is hard when bad things happen to good people.  A book by that title was a best seller. But it can be even harder when good things happen to bad people.

       The author of Psalm 73 wrestles with this problem in a big way.  This is a very important psalm.  What is at stake is more than a theological or intellectual problem.  It is much more personal.  It deals with the survival of faith. 

       Asaph is caught up by the apparent contradiction between when he has been taught in Sunday school – that God is good to the upright and to those who are pure in heart – and his experience in life.  He is envious of the arrogant and angered by the prosperity of the wicked.  He is angry that justice is for sale to money, charm and celebrity while "ordinary citizens" are imprisoned on much weaker evidence -- for some things never change.

       This anger and frustration becomes such a big stumbling block that Asaph ultimately  finds himself facing a complete loss of faith.  His feet almost slip.  He almost stumbles.  He almost comes to the place where he is ready to renounce his faith.  To the great questions, “Is God really in charge, and is God really good?” Asaph is almost ready to answer with a loud “No!”

       At the very beginning of the psalm, Asaph clearly declares the foundation he really wants to build his life on.   In spite of all the doubts that torment him he writes, "Truly God is good to the pure in heart." 

       However, Asaph says, it sometimes sure doesn't seem like it. 

       What puts Asaph in this emotional and intellectual tailspin?  It is life. 

       Here's what I saw. He says.  I saw people getting away with murder.  I saw rich folks living degenerate lives -- stepping on people - and receiving nothing but money, more acclaim, more fun.  They brag about it on Oprah, and people applaud.  They get their picture on the cover of People magazine.  The things of God are not honored in the world.

      Parade Magazine tells of "a newspaper that interviewed a grizzled man, sitting with his hands folded in his lap, behind his farmhouse. “Sir,” asks the reporter, “I'd like to know the secret of your long life." "I drink a gallon of whisky, smoke fifty cigars and go out dancing every day of my life," said the man.  "Remarkable!" said the reporter, "and exactly how old are you?" "Twenty seven."

      Well, maybe so.  But Asaph doesn't see it that way.  The bad guys he sees are sleek and well manicured.  Vice oozes from their souls.”

       Asaph says, “Therefore the people turn and praise them.”  Some things don’t change. The culture worships these people and runs after them.  The crowd that worships wealth and celebrity can hardly wait for the news about the lifestyles of the rich and famous.  They "drink it all in" and beg for more.

       "So why am I being so good?" Asaph asks.   Everyone else cuts corners and gets away with it.  They bring thirteen items into the express line at Vons and no one calls them on it.   They ask for their autographs. That's what bugs Asaph.  It bugs me too.  I mean, why don't people collect trading cards for preachers – sermons attempted, sermons completed, saves – stuff like that?   Or maybe an action figure.

       A big turning point for Asaph, and a lesson for me, comes in verse 15.  Here Asaph recognizes that he doesn't have to speak all his thoughts.  He recognizes that he has no right to destroy the faith of others --especially children. -- by airing his doubts.

       Now the questions don't go away.  But Asaph sets out in search of answers.  And he says that he finds the answers he seeks in worship – the place where he comes face to face with God.  By going "into the sanctuary," he comes before the presence of God.  When he does that he begins to see human life from God's point of view. 

       This is the most vital part of this psalm.  This is where Asaph begins to change.  He begins to shift from natural thinking to spiritual thinking.  In worship Asaph begins to think from God's point of view and that's when he starts to understand. 

       When you come to church or read the scriptures, you aren’t just trying to find something to soothe your nerves.  You are coming to God to have your eyes opened so that you might see things as they really are.   When Asaph meets God and understands who God is and how God works, he begins to see things from a larger perspective.  He sees that you can't stop the DVD of a life at one point and say "that's all there is".  Because God is working.

       In Luke 16, Jesus tells the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus.  The rich man lives a life of the most conspicuous consumption.  He is the personification of the arrogant rich of Psalm 73.     Lazarus, on the other hand, has it bad.  He is covered with sores.  His name means "God is my help" but God's help seems far away.  Each day he is tossed out near the rich man's gate to beg for crumbs from the wealthy man's table.  This gate isn't an ordinary gate.  Jesus calls in a "pylon" which means a gate of size and magnificence.  That tells us what the rich man's mansion was like.  It is a startling backdrop to Lazarus who doesn't even have the strength to fight off the pariah dogs that come to lick at his oozing sores. Aren’t you glad I don’t have a video for that one?

        The rich man is not concerned with Lazarus except as an eyesore and drag on property values.  He is not a man to him.  But Jesus says that God is concerned with Lazarus out there at the rich man's gate.  He's not concerned with profit margin and "trickle down" from the rich man's tax breaks.  But He is concerned with Lazarus, and God will indeed, prove to be his help.

       The rich man is as rich as can be and Lazarus is as poor as can be but they share a common fate.  They both wind up dead.  But beyond the grave lies another point of division --the division between their eternal fates.

       The rich man's funeral is a dandy.  There are lots of flowers. There is an eterna-seal casket of brushed bronze, with velvet and satin for eternal blissful rest.  The preacher talks about his accomplishments and his generous support of the rich people's benevolence league. 

       No one notices Lazarus' funeral.  He doesn't have one. One day the street sweepers find him dead and take him with the trash to throw his naked body on the burning rubbish heap outside the city wall. 

       Many of you have seen the move "Ghost".  What I liked about the movie, besides Whoopie Goldberg, is the way the movie depicts the differing fates awaiting people at death.  Not all the dead get a bright tunnel.  Some get an escort from the underworld and it's not a pretty sight 

     Lazarus' life would seem well described by a bumper sticker I saw which read "Life is hard, then you die." But beyond the body on the trash heap is an unseen event.  Jesus says Lazarus is "carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom."  The rich man, on the other hand, is carried away to the place of torturous fire.  They pass through a common door called death, but end up in very different places.

       In this parable, Jesus points to what Asaph discovers in the temple.  Asaph sees that God rules over the affairs of people and that the ungodly are not in such an envious spot, after all.  In fact, who would want to change places with them in view of their end?

       When are we going to understand that we can't measure completeness in terms of bank balances?  William Randolph Hearst, who built the great Hearst Castle near Cambria searched the world for beautiful objects d'art with which to fill it.  But he had a standing rule that no guest in his home could ever mention the word death.  Each night he was afraid to go to sleep because he was tormented by the fear of death. 

       In the first part of the psalm, Asaph has not faced all the facts. Let us remember the same facts as we look at the arrogant evil of today. 

       Back in 1925 for example, seven men got together for a meeting at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago .  They were seven of the wealthiest men in the world at that time.  They were men who had amassed tremendous sums of money and had almost unbelievable influence, and they had done it in romantic and dramatic ways.  Thousands and thousands of people envied them.  When those seven men sat down at the table, there was more wealth at that table than any other table on the face of the earth.  Of course at that time those men had not lived all of their lives, there were still years to come.

       But now, all of those men are gone.  Now, we can look back upon all of their lives, not just up to that moment when they sat there with all of that gold.  We can see the whole picture from the first page to the last page, we can read it all.

       These were realistic men.  They knew when to buy and when to sell and when to wheel and when to deal.  If anything could be said about them, it was this, they were realistic.  They saw things as they really were.  Or did they? 

       Charles Schawb, the president of the world's largest independent steel company was there.  He died flat broke.  Arthur Cutting, who was the greatest wheat speculator of his day, was there.  He died abroad without a dime.  Richard Whitney was the president of the New York Stock Exchange at the time of that meeting.  He died in Sing Sing penitentiary.  Albert Paul was a member of the cabinet of the President of the U.S.   He was pardoned from prison in order that he might die at home.  Jessie Livermore was the biggest bear on Wall Street.  He was there, and he died a wretched suicide.  Leon Frazier was president of the Bank of International Settlements.  He died a wretched suicide.  Ivan Kruger, head of the world's largest monopoly, think of that, head of the world's largest monopoly, and he too died a wretched suicide.  Men, you see, who saw things as they were.  Or did they?  Losing themselves in the pursuit of what is ours for a few years, and forgetting all the while what can be ours for all eternity.  It is true; you can't take it with you.  Hearses don't pull U-Hauls--not even for a Donald Trump.  But is also true, you can send it on ahead.  You can invest in the Kingdom.

       The worldly crowd may seem to have an easier time on the road of life, but they are heading in the wrong direction!  They are like people lounging in deck chairs on the Titanic.  They don't know the iceberg is coming.  The ungodly live "theofugal" lives. Their actions send them flying off at a tangent from God.  But God calls us to live "theocentric” lives, with our lives circling round Him who is at the center of things.  He says that that is the life that ultimately works.

       Asaph's worship doesn’t just give him new insight into the destiny of the wicked.  It also gives new insight into his own heart and mind.  He realizes that he has been thinking and acting like an animal and not like a believer created in the image of God.  In verse 21, he says "I went through a terrible time of embitterment. It was (literally in Hebrew) as if teeth were biting into my kidneys.  But now Asaph can clearly see the perversity and foolishness of his own doubts.  He thinks of himself as a beast which did not 'understand'.  Now he sees things, and above all himself, in a new dimension which previously has escaped his perception.

        Did the situation in the world change?  Did the Mafia mansions all burn down?  Did Madonna lose her voice and gain some morals?  No, but Asaph changed.

        Now suppose God had reversed things and made Asaph rich and his Godless neighbors poor?  Would that have solved any problems?  No.  Asaph would not have grown in his own faith.  He might trust God only because God blessed him.  And his godless neighbors would be cursing God anyway!

        Christianity does not work as a philosophy.  It only works as a relationship.  The answer God gives Asaph is not an argument.  Instead, in worship, God gives him His own self, His very presence.  By doing this he reveals to Asaph His unspeakable love and grace.  So that now, says the psalmist:  "I have Him!"

       The end of Asaph's experience is a great contrast to the beginning.  He starts with his feet slipping, but ends standing firmly in the faith.  He almost declared that his faith in God was a mistake.  But he closes his psalm affirming that it was good for him to draw near to God!  Instead of preaching his doubts and fears, Asaph ends up declaring God's wonderful works!

        But you know, I think the greatest thing Asaph discovers is found in the contrast between verses 22 and 23.  He realizes he was like an animal, reacting instinctively, concerned only with himself, loving to be petted and taken care of but not wanting any kind of discipline.  So he thinks again.  He repents.  He bows before God and says, "How stupid I was, how ignorant I’ve been, how like an animal I’ve been before you.  When he reaches that place of humble confession, look what happens next.  He says, "Nevertheless I am continually with You. You hold my right hand.  You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.

       The minute Asaph comes to a humble place before God, there comes an instant reassurance.  He realizes that God still loves him. 

       Isn't that good news?  God doesn't treat us according to our obnoxious behavior but according to His love and grace.  All the marvel of the grace of God is poured into that one word in verse, "nevertheless."  Although Asaph confesses his stupidity and his ignorance before God, he knows that God has not cast him away. God is still with him. God loves him.  God still holds him and supports him.  The wonder of that just breaks loose in Asaph's heart, and he cries out in astonishment, "Nevertheless, I am continually with You."  Who have I in heaven but you?  And besides you, I desire nothing on earth.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.'