“Truly God is good to Israel, to those whose hearts are pure. But as for me, I almost lost my footing. My feet were slipping, and I was almost gone. For I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness.” Psalm 73:1-3

I’ve been reading through the Psalms and loving every minute of it. Psalm 73 spoke volumes to my soul about the struggles we have with envy. Envy is a dangerous vice that will grow into a deadly and destructive monster if we let it. It’s also so easy to find ourselves in its grasp.

In Psalm 73, the Psalmist takes us through a confession of his journey of realizing he was envious of the wicked and all their prosperity even though they deserved judgment. What struck me in this Psalm is the expressed feelings in verse 5, “They don’t have troubles like other people; they’re not plagued with problems like everyone else.”

There is this tendency we have to look with the blindness of envy. Blind to the reality that wicked people do have problems… big ones. Blind to the pain they do go through. Blind to the emptiness of riches and blind to the reality that depravity is a losing game long term. Envy even makes us make up reality: if we had what they had, we would have no problems. This reminds me of verse 13 “Did I keep my heart pure for nothing? Did I keep myself innocent for no reason? I get nothing but trouble all day long; every morning brings me pain.”

The problem with this, put simply, is it’s a lie. Not the reality of our troubles and pain necessarily. The lie is that evil people only prosper and have it all. What they have is emptiness. What they have is a perversion. What they have is a life destined for eternal damnation.

In verse 17, the Psalmist states, “Then I went into your sanctuary, O God, and I finally understood the destiny of the wicked.” The resolve continues in the rest of the Psalm as the Psalmist spends time with God and is reminded of the truth. There is a direct correlation between our perspective and our time with God. How can we see the goodness of God if we have our eyes on our problems and the wicked who supposedly prosper?

The final resolve is the last verse in this Psalm, Verse 28, “But as for me, how good it is to be near to God! I have made the Sovereign LORD my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do.” Full circle emotionally. But isn’t that reality? We whine, complain, and have our eyes in envy land, and then God brings us back to the reality of His goodness and love that we don’t deserve.

This week I would encourage you to keep your eyes on our Good God. Our Sovereign LORD who provides and heals. Our Amazing God who protects and gives us victory over sin. If we can do this, we will keep our eyes from envy and from having to go full circle one more time in our lives, right back to our good God.

Keeping my Eyes on our good God with you,
Pastor Mike