Maybe you have coworkers who have very little integrity, and yet they seem to be thriving. You, on the other hand, have tried to do business in a way that honours the Lord, but instead of thriving, you are facing all kinds of trouble. It leaves you saying, “What’s the point?!?”

One of your coworkers, who was fooling around with someone in the office, just got a promotion. But you were faithful to your spouse, and now you lost your job. It leaves you wondering, “Lord, did you bless the wrong person?”

This was Asaph’s problem, and he tells us honestly, “My feet had almost slipped. I was nearly gone. I almost gave up.” If a godly man like Asaph could be tempted like that, we shouldn’t be surprised when it happens to us.

Peter tells us that Christian believers have an enemy—Satan, who is like a roaring lion, prowling around looking to see who he can devour (1 Pet. 5:8). The more useful you are to Christ, the more the enemy will want to devour you. That’s what was happening here. Satan wanted to spoil Asaph’s testimony, end his ministry, and destroy him.

There will be times of special testing in your life, and your future usefulness to Christ will depend in large measure on how you handle yourself when they come. The apostle Paul said, “Take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm” (Eph. 6:13). That’s what Asaph did, and God brought him through.

Have you ever felt like giving up on your pursuit of a godly life?

You can hear Asaph’s distress in his words, “I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” The wicked act as if no one can touch them, and God does nothing about it. But here I am trying to serve the Lord in ministry, and all I see is the agenda of those who hate God and despise His Word moving forward. Why does God allow it? It makes no sense to me.

You can understand Asaph’s problem. Can you make sense of the way God rules the world? Asaph couldn’t, but the real problem lay deeper. Asaph couldn’t make sense of what God was doing in his own life. “All the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning” (73:14). He poured out all this frustration about how God rules the world, but the real problem is that things were going wrong in his own life.

Remember that this is the confession of a godly man. Asaph is in full-time ministry. He is a spiritual leader. Other people look to him for leadership. This man has been reading his Bible and saying his prayers. He tithes his money. He has poured great energy into pursuing a holy life. He has made sacrifices for the advance of God’s kingdom.

But sometimes, underneath the bigger questions that we have about the world, there are deeper, more personal questions about what God is doing in our lives. You ask, “Why do the wicked prosper?” But the real question is: “Why hasn’t God prospered me?” You ask, “Why does God allow suffering?” But the real question is: “Why is there so much pain in my life?” You ask, “Does God really control the universe?” But the real question is: “Why is my life falling apart?”

Are you struggling to make sense of what God is doing in your life?

This psalm begins with a statement of faith. It was like a creedal statement, the sort of thing you would recite every week at worship. It is rather like us confessing “Jesus is Lord” when we meet for worship. “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.”

Asaph was saying, “This is what I’ve always believed. This is what I built my life on. But I have to tell you, ‘As for me, my feet had almost stumbled’” (73:2).

So, if Asaph were a New Testament believer, his story would have gone something like this: “Jesus is Lord! But you need to know—I almost lost it. My feet almost slipped. I nearly lost my faith. I almost gave up my ministry. I nearly lost my foothold. I was almost gone. And I want to tell you my story of how God turned me around.”

Every Sunday, as Christians confess faith in Christ together, there are some folks who are right where Asaph was. You don’t find it easy to sing. You struggle to focus on the Word. You hear the faith confessed, but your mind is pounding with questions—“Yes, but… and what about…?”

Your faith that was once strong now seems to hang by a slender thread. What is wonderfully real for other people seems strangely distant from you. You say to yourself, “You know, I could just walk away from all this.” If that’s where you are today, Asaph was right there too.

On a scale of 1 (I have no idea what this is like) to 10 (I’m right where he was), how do you relate to Asaph’s experience?

Psalm 73 is the personal testimony of a man who came through a great crisis in his life. He tells us how he nearly lost his faith, but God helped him, and he found his way through the crisis and into a stronger faith than he had before.

If you look at the heading of Psalm 73, you will see that it was written by a man called Asaph. Asaph was one of the men that King David put in charge of music in the house of the Lord (1 Chr. 6:39; see also 6:31). He was in the procession when David brought the ark to Jerusalem.

After that, the Bible says that David “appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the LORD, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel. Asaph was the chief” (1 Chr. 16:4, 5).

Asaph was in full-time ministry. He was a mature believer. He was a godly man, and God had put him in a position of great responsibility. But he came to a point in his life where he almost lost his faith. It is helpful to know that even mature believers sometimes experience times of great crisis when it seems as if everything is falling apart.

Over the centuries, God has used this psalm to bring comfort to His people in the midst of their doubts and pain. Introducing Asaph is like introducing an old friend.

Can you recall a time when you almost lost your faith? What gave you stability?

When you come to faith in Jesus Christ, God puts His Spirit within you. That’s His promise.

The first evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence in your life will be that you have a deep desire to please God and to serve Him by being a channel of His love into the lives of others.

This will be the greatest struggle of your life, and so before you set out on this journey, you need to know if it’s possible. The Heidelberg Catechism faces this issue head-on:

Q: Can those converted to God obey these commands perfectly?

A: No. In this life, even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience. Nevertheless, with all seriousness of purpose, they do begin to live according to all, not only some, of God’s commandments.

No Christian is everything that God calls him or her to be. The finest Christian you have ever met has only a small beginning of obedience.

But there is a beginning of true holiness in every believer. No Christian is completely pure, but there is the beginning of purity in every Christian. No Christian is completely content, but there is the beginning of contentment in every Christian. What we have now is a beginning of truth, of peace, of integrity, of rest, and of worship. We truly begin to live according to all, not only some of God’s commandments.

Every day of your Christian life offers opportunities for the new life that God has begun in you to grow stronger. And when you stand in the presence of Jesus, what He has begun in you will be complete.

Are you living in the power of a new life?Or are you simply trying hard, in your own strength, to do what God commands?

You see what the apostle Paul is saying: “I saw myself as a morally upright person.” But then Paul says, “All that changed,” and he tells us what led him to a complete reevaluation of his position: “If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin” (Rom. 7:7).

This religious man had concluded that he was morally upright. But now he is telling us the commandments showed him that he is a sinner. What happened? He ran into the tenth commandment! “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’” (Rom. 7:7).

Here he was with his moral checklist: He doesn’t steal. He doesn’t kill. Then one day he comes face-to-face with the tenth commandment. That’s the language he uses: “The commandment came…” (7:9). He’s talking about personal experience. “It suddenly came to me – God is not just looking at my outward actions, He is measuring my heart.”

The tenth commandment is an absolute killer for morally upright people, because once you see the meaning of it, you will conclude that you’re a long way from keeping the other nine.

Many of us are just like Paul—good people, hard workers, upright, trustworthy, and generous. We have good works and good values, and we see our religion as something that we offer to God. But if this is true of you, your biggest problem may be that your moral uprightness is the very thing that keeps you from seeing your need for a Saviour.

This tenth commandment is for you. You need the killer commandment to show you that morally upright people need a Saviour too.

Have you come face-to-face with the tenth commandment?

Coveting happens in the secret places of your heart. It is known only to you and to God. Your neighbour would know if you stole his car, but he would never know if you coveted his car. Nobody knows the secret desires of your heart. Nobody knows your secret fantasies.

The tenth commandment is the key to understanding the other nine. All the other commandments are about specific actions. Murder, adultery, stealing, and perjury are all behaviours that can be seen, but the tenth commandment deals with what happens in your heart.

People have the idea that in the Old Testament God was only concerned with our actions, but that it was Jesus who put a new spin on the commandments: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mat. 5:27-28).

The tenth commandment makes it clear that this was the original intent of Almighty God when He gave the commandments to Moses. The reason Jesus taught as He did is that this is precisely the teaching of the Old Testament.

The tenth commandment makes it clear that God calls us to more than upright behaviour. He calls us to purity of heart. It’s not just that you should do right but that you should be right.

Have you been aiming primarily at the target of right behaviour, or at right behaviour and purity of heart?

The essence of lying is saying what will achieve the desired result, irrespective of whether it is the truth.

Gossip: This involves passing on news about another person that may or may not be true. Someone has likened gossip to ripping open a feather pillow on a windy day. The feathers fly in the wind, and once they’re out, there is no way you can ever gather them back in.

Flattery: This is saying to someone’s face what you would never say behind their back. You want them to like you, so you tell them how wonderful they are, even though it bears little relation to reality.

Exaggeration: You want to impress, and so you overstate what you said or did, taking credit that belongs to someone else. Or, you’re looking for sympathy, so you overstate the wrong that was done to you, because you want the other person to feel sorry for you. Lying is saying whatever will achieve the desired result, irrespective of whether it is the truth.

Instead of using harmful words, God calls us to use our words in love to build others up.

Which of these forms of unwholesome talk are you most prone to? Number them from 1 (most prone) to 3 (least prone).