Asaph may have got off to a rough start in Psalms 73 and 74, but he finds cause to turn the corner in Psalm 75. Whatever his reasons, he’s been in a bad and desperate place, yet through remembering who God is and how He as acted on Asaph’s behalf previously, Asaph has cause for great hope.
Asaph’s confidence is in God: in His name and in His wonderful deeds.
Perhaps it’s Salzburg, perhaps it’s having recently walked down the path where the song was shot for The Sound of Music with Molly, but I haven’t been able to shake the song ‘I have Confidence in Me’ from my head in recent weeks. It’s my least favourite song in the movie but, more than that, the very premise of the song sucks!
If our confidence is in confidence (a strange thought in itself) or in ourselves, it’s sincerely missplaced.
Verse 6 of Psalm 75 makes it pretty plain: ‘no one can exalt themselves’. It doesn’t mean we don’t have a crack though. We may pray ‘your will be done’ and I may have a deep trust in the sovereignty of God, but there’s still a selfish heart being slowly put to death in me (and sometimes it’s administered temporary and swift CPR).
At the centre of our prayer for God’s will in me is God carving me into the image of Jesus. At the centre of self-will however, is me, carving the world into my own image. The problem is that I’m part of the mess so, even when I try and make things right by imposing my self will, I just make it messier. Jesus makes beauty out of the mess, yet it’s only as we allow Him to get to work in us and abide in Him that he can transform us and regenerate us through the Holy Spirit.
Right through God’s Word, people have a new revelation of this truth:
David: For you have been my hope, Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth. (Psalm 71)
Jeremiah: But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him (Jeremiah 17)
Paul (?): Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11)
John: This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. (1 John 5)
I think there’s good reason for us to remind ourselves that our confidence is best placed in our Father: we seem to do a great job of forgetting. We often only deviate in degrees but it doesn’t take too long on a misguided trajectory to drift a long way off course. Remembering God’s goodness, his sovereignty, His might and power, and His grace and mercy brings us back again.
Perhaps ‘My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and rigteousness’ would be a far better lyric to to have stuck in my head. Less jaunty, but laden with truth.