UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

READ PSALM 71-75

SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 71-75 with your spouse or household then re-read Psalm 73 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on  Psalm 73:16-20  asking the Lord, the question “What does this text mean?” then 2 mins in silence asking the Lord what He is saying to you personally through Psalm 73:16-20  and then share together with your spouse or household what the Lord has been saying. Finally one person reads out loud the devotional below and then pray for one another.  

PSALM 73: 16-20

“When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God;  then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground;you cast them down to ruin.How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! As a dream when one awakes; so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.”

It is easy to pick up a newspaper today and read of totalitarian leaders who seem so evil.  ‘The evil conceits of their minds has no limits” (verse 7). Wicked leaders today seem to be well described here by the psalmist’ ‘pride is their necklace they clothe themselves with violence.’ (verse 6). In Psalm 73 we read how God sees pride and what the destiny of wicked rulers will be.

John Wesley preached on this psalm and I am going to summarize below his sermon (1) he gave in the eighteenth century on Psalm 73, which seems very relevant to today (2). “Anyone that considers these verses (in Psalm 73), will easily observe that the Psalmist is speaking directly of the wicked that prosper in their wickedness. It is very common for these utterly to forget that they are creatures of a day; to live as if they were never to die; as if their present state was to endure forever…. how miserable a mistake is this… …but I would at present carry this thought further. I would show how near a resemblance there is between human life and a dream. What is a dream? It is a series of persons and things presented to our mind which have no being but in our imagination. It seems to be an echo of what was said or done when we were awake… a fragment of life, broken off at both ends, having no connexion with the real things which either precede it or follow it.

Let us illustrate rather than prove the resemblance between transient dreams and the dream of life. Suppose we have before us someone who has just passed into the world of spirits. We talk to this person, before us and we say to them “You have been living on earth for 40, 50 or 60 years.” God has just spoken and said to you, “Awake you who have been sleeping.” Look around you. What is the difference? Where is your body. Where are your limbs, your hands your feet, your head. They lie cold insensible. How different now you are thoroughly awake, are the objects around you. Where are the houses and gardens and fields and cities which you lately saw? Now suppose this to be the case with any of you and that you are now present before God. It may be so tomorrow; perhaps tonight. Perhaps this night your soul “may be required of you;” the dream of life may end and you may wake into broad eternity.

See there lies the poor inanimate carcass shortly to be sown in corruption and dishonour. But where is the immortal incorruptible spirit? There it stands, naked before the eyes of God! What profit have you reaped of all your labour and care? Does your money follow you? Do your clothes follow you? Where is the honour the pomp, the applause that surrounded you? All are gone; all are vanished away, “like as a shadow they depart.”

See on the other hand, the mansions which were prepared for you before the foundations of the world! O what a difference between the dream that is past and the real scene that is now before you! Look up! See Jesus! Look down! What a prison is there, its inhabitants gnashing their teeth at Him! We might wish that we had a friend with us always whispering in our ear, “Wake up O sleeper rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.” Soon you will awake into real life. You will stand a naked spirit, in the world of spirits, before the face of the great God! See that now you hold fast to that “eternal life which he has given you in his Son”.

In the new Wonka film … Willy Wonka encourages us to dream of  “A world of your own a place to escape to, where you  can be free” … but John Wesley 250 years ago  challenged us from Psalm 73  to hold fast to what is real… that eternal life which the Father has  given us in the Son. How do we do this?..we need a transformed worldview (3) ….the psalms help us re-orient to that real world… Life is but a dream … we need to wake up out of our slumber, and as he says …we might wish that we had a friend with us always whispering in our ear, “Wake up O sleeper rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.”

Prayer

Lord Open my eyes Lord Jesus Christ to see that you are my portion forever. So many in our celebrity-focused consumerist nation today are lost in temporal fantasies and have no thought of the age to come. Wake me up Lord Jesus out of my slumber, I pray!

References

(1) Wesley, J. Sermons Volume 3, addresses, 325.

(2) Taylor, A. Light the Fire Again, 35.

(3) Wright, T Finding God in the Psalms.