God, Life’s Not Fair!

There’s an amazing little two-letter word that we use constantly in the English language: it’s the word UP. Everyone understands what the word UP means. It means, well… UP. It means above, toward the sky.

But we seem to love this little word, because we use it as much as we can. When you waken in the morning, why do you wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? Why do we ask people to speak UP? Then why do we tell them to shut UP? And why are politicians UP for election?

This little word UP is a word that is not really needed, but we use it anyway. We brighten UP a room, light UP a cigar, polish UP the silverware, lock UP the house, and fix UP the old car.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, think UP excuses, and get tied UP in traffic.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special. It may be confusing, but a drain needs to be opened UP because it is clogged UP. A room needs to be tidied UP because it has been messed UP.

We open UP a store in the morning and close it UP in the evening. We wrap UP a present and then open it UP. We whip UP a batch of chili, and then we gobble it all UP. We seem to be all mixed UP about the word UP.

In order to bone UP on the proper use of the word UP, I looked it UP in the dictionary. And I found that in one standard dictionary, the word UP takes UP half a column, and the listed definitions add UP to almost 40.

If you’re UP to it, you might try drawing UP a list of the many ways in which the word UP is used. It may take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with UP to a thousand or more!

Well, we can have a lot of fun with the word UP, but today we want to look at someone who was DOWN. The author of Psalm 73 was not feeling very UP when he wrote it. It’s a Psalm that asks a question that all of us, at one time or another, have asked.

It’s the question of fairness. Why does life so often seem to be unfair? Why do people who have no use for God seem to prosper, while those who are devoted to God suffer?

A few years ago, a story came out of Chicago about a tragic accident involving a pastor and his family. The pastor and his wife lived in Milwaukee. They were on a one-day visit to Chicago with 5 of their 7 children. They were driving their minivan along an expressway when suddenly their vehicle ran over a sharp metal rod which had fallen off a passing truck and was laying on the roadway.

The piece of metal bounced up and punctured the gas tank of the minivan, which immediately exploded into flames. Before the pastor could realize what was happening and get the van stopped, four of his five children had burned to death, and the fifth died in the hospital later that day. The pastor and his wife survived.

I’m sure that since that terrible day when most of their family was snatched away in an instant, that pastor and his wife must have found themselves asking the questions that we find raised in Psalm 73.

Why do godly, right-living people so often seem to go through such horrendous trials while the wicked seem to have tranquil, happy, and successful lives? Why does life so often seem to be hard and unfair for a person who’s trying to follow God? When all is said and done, is it really worth it to be on God’s side?

If you’ve ever found yourself asking those kinds of tough questions, you’re in pretty good company. The writer of Psalm 73 was a man named Asaph. Asaph wasn’t a pastor, but he was a worship leader—one of the three Levitical choir directors who served under King David.

He was a man who was steeped in theology and surrounded by the trappings of religion, and yet he had the same struggles we all do. And he wrestled honestly with those struggles in this Psalm.

Psalm 73:1-3 Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

I will always remember a kindly old man named Oswald T. Hall, may he rest in peace. Affectionately known as Ozzie, Mr. Hall was my high school chemistry teacher in the 11th Grade at good old Verdun High School. He was short, bald, and nearing retirement. They said he was a genius at chemistry. In fact, Ozzie had written the textbook we were using, which was gloriously titled Semi-Macro Experiments in High School Chemistry.

When I was in Ozzie’s chemistry class, I can remember—when I wasn’t fooling around with the Bunsen burners—actually doing some lab experiments. (Now unlike Ozzie, I was no genius in chemistry!) The lab results that I got seldom agreed with the results that Ozzie’s chemistry textbook predicted I should get.

When the textbook said that I should get 10 milliliters of ammonia from a reaction; I only got 3. When the textbook said that the solution should change color in 30 seconds; my solution exploded. Things like that.

And this is the kind of situation Asaph is wrestling with in Psalm 73. He says “My doctrine tells me one thing, but my experience tells me another. The Bible tells me that God is good, but my life tells me that maybe He’s not. Things aren’t going right for me, I’m having a hard time, my circumstances are really messed up. My lab results don’t seem to measure up to what the textbook says should be happening.

And if that’s not frustration enough, I look around and I see that many of my fellow students in the great classroom of life aren’t even looking at the textbook. In fact, they don’t even care what the textbook says—and yet they seem to be getting good results!

They are prosperous—they have plenty of money (v.3). They have no struggles. They are healthy, and strong, and beautiful (v.4). They are carefree—they don’t seem to have burdens to bear (v.5). They are proud and arrogant. They even seem to be able to get away with murder (v.6).

Incidentally, O.J. Simpson resurfaced in the news last week. He was interviewed on a couple of TV talk shows and earnestly declared that, between rounds of golf, he was still diligently seeking his wife’s killer. He also declared that he was not going to pay one dime of the $33 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit he lost to the Goldman family.

Asaph goes on and on, listing the many ways that the ungodly seem to have it all over the believer. In verse 10, Asaph complains that “people turn to them—that is the wicked—and drink up waters in abundance.” The wicked are the ones who are influencing the masses. They are the ones who are moulding public opinion. They’re the ones who are gaining the audience’s ear and shaping the culture.

People like Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Larry Elison, Rupert Murdoch—the movers are shakers of the modern world. Most of them are spiritually apathetic at best; defiantly godless at worst. They say, as in verse 11 “How can God know? Does the Most High have knowledge?” Their whole lifestyle is built on the premise that God is a know-nothing God and a do-nothing God.

And so, by the time Asaph comes to verse 13, he is really down in the dumps. (You want to get your violin out here…)

“Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning.”

In other words, “it doesn’t seem to pay to be a God-follower.” When I look around and see how other people are making out in the game of life, it looks like they’re winning and I’m losing. You would think that, if God wanted me to be on His side, He would at least make it worth my while.”

These were the depressing thoughts that Asaph was pondering in his head. And what’s doubly depressing is that he realizes that he’d better just shut up about it. He’d better keep quiet. Because Asaph is a spiritual leader. And if he says what he’s thinking out loud—he’s going to mess up his family and friends; he’s going to damage their faith. Look at verse 15:

If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed your children.

So he kept quiet. He held it all in.

Have you ever felt that way? You are walking around secretly disappointed with God and with the Christian life because you feel like it isn’t working for you, but you’re afraid to say anything about it.

You’ve read the textbook and it says that you should be having an abundant life. But you look at your lab results and you see anything but. And the siren song of our culture tells you to abandon God and enjoy life.

So what do you do? Well, look at what Asaph did.

Psalm 73:16-17 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.

Verses 16-17 are the hinge on which this whole Psalm turns. And it is the hinge on which your whole life can turn. Asaph discovers that we cannot understand what life is all about when we just look at life. It’s too confusing, it’s too contradictory—it so often doesn’t seem to make sense.

Have you seen one of those amazing 3D pictures? When you look right at the picture, it is just a jumble of color. It doesn’t make any sense—confusing lines, strange patterns—they look random; they don’t mean anything.

But if you focus your eyes beyond the picture and wait a few seconds, suddenly the picture snaps into focus. As long as you’re looking at the picture, you can’t see it. As soon as you focus beyond it, the picture becomes clear.

Life is just like that. As long as we’re focusing on life itself, we’ll never understand it. But when we come into the presence of God and begin to focus our attention on Him, life begins to make sense. It wasn’t until Asaph entered the sanctuary—the place of worship—that he began to see things clearly.

Why do we come here to worship God every Sunday? Do we do it because it’s just the thing to do? Do we do it out of habit or because of tradition? Is there any practical purpose to it?

Indeed there is. If you were to eliminate worship from your life, you would be eliminating the only thing that can give you a right perspective on what your life is all about.

Some people need eyedrops in order to see clearly. Worship is like our spiritual eyedrops. We need to take them every day and every week, or our eyesight soon goes blurry. I have a t-shirt that says “Life is kinda blurry til you focus on the truth” and when you focus on God, you are focusing on the truth.

Asaph needed to turn his eyes on God in order to find answers to his questions and doubts. He said “When I tried to understand, I couldn’t. But when I entered the sanctuary and began to worship God, then I began to understand.”

The first thing he understood was that those wicked people he had been envying were standing on very slippery ground. Their position looked secure, but it was anything but.

They were in the same position those 109 poor souls were in as they sat on the runway at Charles de Gaulle Airport waiting to take off in the Concorde. They were happy, they were excited, they were looking forward to a pleasant flight on the world’s most prestigious airliner, followed by a luxurious cruise to the Caribbean. Little did they know that they were riding a death machine. They thought that they were four hours from New York, but in reality, they were just two minutes from disaster.

I grew up on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. Near our house there was a boat ramp—a concrete driveway that went down into the water. If you wanted to launch a boat, you would back your boat trailer down the ramp and into the water where you could then float your boat off.

The only problem was that the lower part of the boat ramp was covered with slippery green algae. If you backed your car down too far and got the drive wheels onto that slippery algae, you’d have a problem. I remember once seeing a car completely in the river, because the driver got onto that slippery stuff. And the more he tried to spin the wheels to get out, the farther in he went!

People who leave God out of their lives are on slippery ground. Oh, they may look like they have it all together, but it’s only a matter of time before they are ruined. They are going to face the judgment of God.

Look at how Asaph’s focus shifts in the latter portion of this Psalm. In the first 15 verses, where is his focus? He is looking at himself and at other people. The pronouns he uses are all I, me, and they.

But in the last 13 verses, he’s looking at God. The pronouns change to You. He says “you hold me, you guide me, you will take me to glory.”

Where is your focus this morning? If someone were to keep track of the pronouns you use in your life perspective, would they find me, my, and mine at the top of the list? Or is your outlook UPward, upon God?

One of the interesting things that happens when you put your focus on God is that you begin to understand yourself better. In verse 21, Asaph realizes, with embarrassment, just how foolish he has been. Look at what he says there:

Psalm 73:21 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.

“What a dummy I was!” Asaph says. “I was senseless and ignorant. I thought that I was thinking logically, but I was reasoning logically to the wrong conclusion.”

When you put your eyes on God in worship, your thought processes begin to straighten out. And you begin to feel a sense of security and peace. Look at verse 23 and listen to the incredible security Asaph expresses:

Psalm 73:23 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

God Himself is the answer to our hearts’ desires. In the first part of this Psalm, Asaph was talking as though physical health, and fitness, and material wealth, and celebrity, and a problem-free life were what he really wanted. After all, these were what the wicked had, and he was envious of them.

But now he comes to realize that all that is just smoke and no substance. It cannot satisfy the deep innermost longings of his soul. What he really wants is God. He says “Earth has nothing I desire besides you.”

What a radical statement! Can you honestly say that this morning? Earth has nothing I desire besides you. Take away everything else and leave me with just You, God, and I’ll be happy.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

With God and God alone, we can go on.

Horatio Spafford was a devoted Christian and a very successful lawyer who lived in Chicago in the 1800’s. He had made a fortune in real estate and became instrumental in helping to finance the great evangelistic crusades of Dwight L. Moody. The source of Spafford’s income was the many buildings and properties he owned in Chicago. But on that famous night in 1871, Mrs. O”Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern, and started the Great Chicago Fire that ended up consuming about 10 square kilometers of central Chicago. Spafford saw his fortune literally go up in smoke.

Over the next couple of years Spafford worked himself to exhaustion to try to recoup his losses. Facing health complications, it became obvious that he needed a holiday, so Horatio and his young wife Anna decided to take an extended vacation in France. Anna and their four young daughters went on ahead, while Horatio stayed in Chicago to take care of some pressing business matters. He planned to join his family a few weeks later in France.

Anna and her daughters booked passage on the luxury steamer SS Ville de Havre. However, during the trans-Atlantic crossing, another disaster struck. Traveling in heavy fog in the mid-Atlantic, the passenger ship was rammed by another vessel and sank in minutes. Of the hundreds aboard only 47 were saved, among them Anna, who was rescued unconscious on a floating spar. She was taken by the rescue ship to France. From Paris she cabled the awful news to her husband: “Saved Alone”

Grief stricken, Horatio caught the next steamship to France. He instructed the captain to notify him when they passed over the spot where his daughters had perished. It was in that dark hour, standing at the rail of a steamship in the middle of the vast Atlantic, that Spafford penned the words of the beloved hymn “It is Well With My Soul”.

Many of you are familiar with those details. But you may not know the rest of the story.

In the following years Horatio and Anna had two more daughters, Bertha and Grace. A son tragically died in infancy. The Spaffords decided to seek comfort by going to live in the Holy City and so, in the year 1881, they arrived in Jerusalem with fourteen friends. They settled in a house in the Old City, where the little group became known as the “American Colony”.

They desired to live a simple life of service and devotion to the Lord. Eventually, as more friends from America and relatives from Sweden joined them there, they were able to purchase and fix up an old mansion which had belonged to a wealthy Arab landowner and his four wives. From that base, they ministered to the natives and pilgrims who came to Jerusalem.

Horatio died in 1888 at the age of 60, but Anna and her daughters lived on as the inspirational leaders of the American Colony.

In 1917, during the height of World War One, when the Ottoman Turks surrendered Jerusalem to the British forces under General Allenby, it was none other than Anna Spafford who supplied the Turkish mayor of Jerusalem with a white bedsheet to use as a flag of surrender.

Since then, three generations of Spafford women have sustained the Colony and its humanitarian mission through a succession of Turkish, British, Jordanian and Israeli rule. They set up medical clinics, orphanages, soup kitchens, schools, and a pediatric hospital. Ultimately in 1960, they transformed the mansion into a four-star hotel—the American Colony Hotel—which became a haven for pilgrims and politicians alike.

Jerusalem is a city which has seen much tension and bloodshed during the last forty years. But the American Colony Hotel has served as a neutral place—an oasis of peace in that war-torn city. In May 1992, in a room just off the hotel’s garden courtyard, a meeting took place that represented the first direct talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Those secret negotiations led to the historic Oslo Accords between the nation Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization—an agreement whose details are still being worked out today.

I guess that we can say that the Spafford family’s influence is still being felt. They have been a force for good and for blessing for over a century. It’s because Horatio and Anna, even during their darkest hours of tragedy—even during those moments when life seemed completely unfair—kept their eyes focused on God.

God was the strength of their heart and their portion forever.