9 They set their mouths against the heavens,
and their tongue struts through the earth. – Yesterday we ended with a person trying to fool us that God isn’t important in life. Success and wealth and status are the important thing
10 Therefore his people turn back to them,
and find no fault in them.
11 And they say, “How can God know?
Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
12 Behold, these are the wicked;
always at ease, they increase in riches. – What on earth is Asaph getting at? Think it through! You might be quicker on the uptake than I am, but in v 10 who is the ‘his’ referring to, and who are the ‘them’? And why do the people turn back to them? Foolishly (as I understand these verses) God’s people have deluded themselves into thinking that you can do things behind God’s back and without His perception! Therefore they want all that these above presented trouble-free worldly people have! The ‘them’ is people like the caricature drawn yesterday of anti-God people!
13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean
and washed my hands in innocence.
14 For all the day long I have been stricken
and rebuked every morning. – Temptation comes from many angles. But being in the right relationship with God so that we can smell the odour of temptation is fundamentally important! Even a whiff of a faint odour of temptation should make us wake up to what is going on!
15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,”
I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
16 But when I thought how to understand this,
it seemed to me a wearisome task,
17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;
then I discerned their end. – The final three verses makes a number of very valid points! 1. Giving into temptation has a way of messing up the following generations – those whom we should love and for whom we should want the very best! 2. Giving into temptation is much easier than the wearisomeness of following the often non-spectacular right way! 3. Coming into the Presence of God gives clarity to the end of either of the ways we can choose to walk – God’s or our own, which is really Satan’s way! Remember that Satan usually covers ‘his horns and red devilish clothes’ with something much more attractive! Judgement and Death is inevitable!
Ephesians 6: 10&11 – Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
Prayer: Thank You that going to church often gloriously sheds light onto our life’s pathway!
As I read it! 