Asaph, the author of Psalm 73, was very perplexed and nearly even stumbled by what he saw in the world around him. While he and the other people of God were suffering, it seemed that the unbelievers and the wicked were prospering; they were well nourished, and they went to their graves in peace. So much so was his inner turmoil until he went into the sanctuary of God. Then he received another view, a particular perception, of the situation concerning the ungodly. Not only did Asaph see the eventual judgment upon the wicked, but what is more important is that he saw that, as a seeker of God, he would be restricted by God and even stripped by God to such an extent that God Himself alone would be his only possession and only enjoyment.

In this case it is one place that changes everything. In Old Testament times that place was the sanctuary of God in the temple where there was God’s presence and His oracle. That place, however, was a prefigure of the place where God dwells and speaks today: our regenerated spirit and the church. Concerning the regenerated spirit of the believers, the apostle Paul says, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16) and, “The Lord be with your spirit” (2 Tim. 4:22a). Concerning the church, he says, “For we are the temple of the living God, even as God said, ‘I will dwell among them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people’” (2 Cor. 6:16b), and, “In whom [(Christ)] you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit” (Eph. 2:22). The church is the house of the living God (1 Tim. 3:15). When we Christians turn to the Lord in our spirit and gather together with the called-out ones (the church), we are enlightened concerning the troubling things in our life, and we can praise God that He would be everything to us, our unique possession and enjoyment! At that time we will be able to declare with the psalmist, “Whom do I have in heaven but You? And besides You there is nothing I desire on earth. My flesh and my heart fail, But God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever” (Psa. 73:25-26).