Psalm 73 Sermon. February 28, 2021. Grace-Benson, Grace-Vail. Which would you rather have? The peace of a person who: has no struggle at death, whose body is sturdy and healthy, who does not have the common struggles so many face, and who are not plagued like others are. Or would you rather have the struggle of a person who is plagued all day, punished every morning, whose heart is bitter, and who struggles with envy so much it feels like their feet are slipping? In a vacuum it’s an easy choice. We’d all take the peace over the struggle. But there’s more to the equation. Psalm 73 includes the cost to the peace and the struggle. It’s the peace of the wicked; and the struggle of the righteous. The peace of the wicked means that person wears pride like a necklace, clothed with violence, they oppress others from a high perch, they speak maliciously against people and even against heaven. While the struggle of the righteous includes having a pure heart and clean hands, though it seems to all be in vain. So, with the fuller picture, which of those 2 would you rather have: the peace of the wicked, or the struggle of the righteous? I know what your head answer is. We’re at a place of worship on Sunday morning. We’d all answer in our heads, I’ll take the struggle of the righteous over the peace of the wicked. But I want to challenge you this morning, because sometimes your body and spirit have a hard time agreeing with your head. Sometimes we are like Asaph who wrote this Psalm; we struggle to decipher which of those 2 options really is better - especially in light of how unfair it all seems. In order to sit with this question longer and discover how our hearts actually seek to answer in real time, I want to consider a few real life examples with you. I’ll give you 3 examples: medium, extreme, and mild. First example: Would you rather be a business person in the US who has wealth and success in their business, who can a nice house for their family and plenty of vacation time, the best health care, therapies for any problems that come up; and all it takes to get there is a little taking advantage of customers, undercutting competition, falsifying information to make the product seem better than it is, or even deliberately covering up information, a little bribing regulatory agencies - but the payoff is success and a secure, peaceful life. Or would you rather be a business person who struggles to pay the bills at home and to keep the doors open at work, who values their product and their customer, but who just can’t seem to keep up with the competition, who tries to do what is right, but doesn’t seem to get the reward that others do. Which of those 2 would you rather be? More than the question of which one would you want, the bigger question that plagues Asaph was: is this even fair? If we live in a world where the wicked seem to prosper while the righteous struggle, what kind of God would allow that? Let me give you an extreme example of the unfairness. I’ll tell you about Shiro Ishii, who I’ll warn you, might have done some of the most wicked things you’ve never heard about. Shiro Ishii was a Japanese scientist and doctor during WWII. He was given authority to run a facility called Unit 731; where he conducted horrific experiments on thousands of live human prisoners in order to learn how to effectively carry out biological warfare.
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