Morning By Morning #210

So foolish was I, and ignorant:
I was as a beast before thee.

Psalm 73:22 KJV

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

Remember, this is the confession of David, “a man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14), confessing his inner life by saying, “I was senseless and ignorant.” [Editor’s note: Actually this is a psalm of Asaph, but he was one of David’s choir leaders who may have written this on behalf of David.] The word foolish here means more than its usual meaning, for earlier David says, “I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Ps. 73:3 KJV), which shows the foolishness he intended was connected to the sin of envy. And in our text today he not only puts himself down as being “foolish” but adds a word to intensify the meaning: “So foolish was I.”

How foolish? He couldn’t say, but it was a sinful foolishness that was not to be excused due to the simple frailty of man. It was to be condemned due to its perversity and its willful ignorance, for he was envious of “the prosperity of the wicked” and was forgetful of the dreadful end awaiting them.

Are we any better than David that we should consider ourselves wise? Do we profess to have attained perfection or to have been so punished by the rod of correction that all our willfulness toward sin is gone? This is pure pride! If David was foolish, how foolish are we! If only we could see ourselves as we are!

Dear believer, consider times past when you have doubted God while He has been so faithful to you. Think of your foolish outcry during affliction, “No, my Father!” when He was actually working to give you a greater blessing. How often during dark and difficult days have you misread His sovereignty, misinterpreted His hand at work, and have complained, “Everything is working against me!” when they are truly “work[ing] together for [your] good” (Rom. 8:28 KJV)! Consider how often you have chosen sin because of its pleasure, when in fact that pleasure became a root of bitterness in you!

Surely if we know our own heart, we must plead guilty to the indictment of sinful foolishness. Then, once fully conscious of our foolishness, we must make David’s resulting resolve our own: “Guide me with your counsel” (Ps. 73:24).

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Our warning today is the foolishness of thinking we have “attained perfection.” As Spurgeon says, “Are we any better than David?” Nor are we better than Paul, who said: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect” (Phil. 3:12), and, “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (1 Cor. 10:12).

God “chose us in [Christ]…to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph. 1:4), and He sees us as such already, but it is because He views us “in Christ,” not because we have attained perfection. Thus, Paul continues in Philippians:

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12 – 14