Asaph has put into words what is and has been a struggle for many Christians down through the ages who have gone through difficult times. This frustration is compounded when their struggles occur against the backdrop of the prosperity of the wicked. Trying to understand this paradox seemed like a wearisome task to Asaph—that is, until he went into the sanctuary of God (vv. 16–17). The sanctuary of God—with its ceremonies and rituals and bloody altars—had a sobering and crystallizing effect on Asaph, causing him to see his previous envy and doubt as coming from an embittered soul (v. 21), leading him to think and speak like a brutish and ignorant beast toward God (v. 22).

Question and answer number 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism is as follows: “What is your only comfort in life and death?” Answer:
That I, with body and soul, both in life and death am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all of my sins and delivered me from all of the powers of the Devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; yea that all things must be subservient to my salvation and therefore by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and He makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.
I begin with this all-encompassing word of comfort as the backdrop for the very difficult subject of trusting God in difficult times, especially when that difficulty is financial. Contrary to what some might think, Christians are not exempt from the trials and adversities that are part and parcel of living in a fallen world. So I would like to begin with three overarching extractions from the answer to question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism: (1) We belong to Christ, both body and soul, which means that His love and care for us are for both body and soul; (2) the blood of Christ has satisfied for all our sins, and therefore, we cannot reason that our hardship is punishment for sin; (3) we are delivered from the powers of the devil, which means that tough times are not ultimately dispensed by the hand of Satan. He will use our tough times as opportunities to entice us to not trust God or to make us think that He has forsaken us. But as Paul says in Colossians 1:13, “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” Therefore, all that occurs in a Christian’s life is by the will of God and ultimately works for the good of the believer. Romans 8:28 declares, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
This does not mean that only good things happen—far from it. The catechism and the Scriptures teach that God’s saving purposes for the elect can never be frustrated by anything they experience. Romans 5:3–5 puts it this way:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Consequently, we are enabled to serve and trust God in all seasons and circumstances.
The rationale of the catechism is that faith in the sufficiency of the person and work of Christ and the sovereignty of God attaches us to a reality that transcends our temporal experience and circumstances. We do not diminish the importance of our physical bodies in their present state. After all, the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 12:1 that we are to “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice . . . , which is [our] spiritual worship.” But in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul points us to the transcendent realities to which our faith in Christ attaches us:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (vv. 16–18)
Critics of the Christian faith, as well as those who adhere to various forms of the prosperity gospel, would take Paul’s words as espousing a “pie in the sky” religion. Be that as it may, our faith attaches us to a reality that is beyond our present experiences in this fallen world. Embracing the paradox that the Apostle presents does not mean that Christians go through tough times stoically and unperturbed. The words of Asaph in Psalm 73 come to mind.
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
The portrait that we get in the Scriptures of man in his fallen condition is that he is utterly and thoroughly infected by sin in his whole person. In other words, sin is not an external blemish, but something that goes to the very core of our being.

One word that crystallizes the essence of the Christian faith is the word grace. One of the great mottos of the Protestant Reformation was the Latin phrase sola gratia—by grace alone. This phrase wasn’t invented by the sixteenth-century Reformers. Its roots are in the theology of Augustine of Hippo, who used it to call attention to the central concept of Christianity, that our redemption is by grace alone, that the only way a human being can ever find himself reconciled to God is by grace. That concept is so central to the teaching of Scripture that to even mention it seems like an insult to people’s intelligence; yet, if there is a dimension of Christian theology that has become obscured in the last few generations, it is grace.
Two things that every human being absolutely must come to understand are the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. These topics are difficult for people to face. And they go together: if we understand who God is, and catch a glimpse of His majesty, purity, and holiness, then we are instantly aware of the extent of our own corruption. When that happens, we fly to grace—because we recognize that there’s no way that we could ever stand before God apart from grace.
The prophet Habakkuk was upset during one period in Jewish history because he saw the enemies of the people of God triumphing, the wicked prospering, and the righteous suffering. He raised a lament, saying: “Are you not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof” (Hab. 1:12). He went on to a affirm the holiness of God, and how God cannot tolerate evil: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong…” (Hab. 1:13a).
This is anything but characteristic of the human condition. We can tolerate what is wrong. In fact, if we don’t tolerate what is wrong, we can’t tolerate each other or even ourselves. In order to live with myself as a sinner, I have to learn to tolerate something that is evil. If my eyes were too holy to behold iniquity, I’d have to shut my eyes anytime I was with someone else—and they would see in me a man who has besmirched the image of God.
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We must understand that “the talk” is never going to be enough. Rather, we need to engage in “the talking.” Helping kids navigate the sexualized culture is an ongoing activity rather than a once-and-done endeavor to simply check off our parenting list. And like anything else in life, the more we talk, the easier it becomes to keep on talking, and the more freedom our children will feel to come to us with their questions.

“I know where babies come from!” Those were the words my eight-year-old son blurted out in the midst of a conversational lull during a family dinner back in 1994. Before asking him what he had learned on the topic, I awkwardly swallowed my mouthful of food and asked him about where he had received his information. With genuine enthusiasm he answered, “Donnie told me. . . on the playground!”
I’ll spare you the details of Donnie’s not-even-close-to-accurate sex-ed lesson, but Donnie’s miseducation had dropped in our laps a golden parenting opportunity for beginning a series of conversations with our young children about God’s good and glorious design for His gift of sex and sexuality.
That conversation took place thirty years ago. Today, it isn’t just “Donnie” on the playground. Kids are receiving a dangerous miseducation on sex and sexuality that runs at high volume on a 24/7 loop through smartphones, social media, streaming television, and more. Truth be told, this ever-present narrative washes over our kids, misshaping them from preschool right into adulthood.
When I think about our culture’s obsession with sex, I can’t help but ponder the wise words of Proverbs 14:12:
There is a way that seems right to a man,but its end is the way to death.
As parents, we are called by God to use our words and our example to teach our children and teens God’s good design for sex and sexuality, offering correctives to help them find their way through the cultural narrative’s lies. Here are three essential elements to lead them into hearing, believing, and following God’s will and way about sex that is right for all of His image-bearers.
1. We Must Teach God’s Creational Design
If our sexualized culture is getting sex wrong, where do we go to get it right? We go to the Bible. God’s order and design for sexuality is clearly stated in the creation narrative (Gen. 1–2), reflected in the teachings of Jesus (Matt. 19:4–6), and maintained consistently throughout the Bible. God’s plan way back “in the beginning” (Gen. 1:1) reflects the way things are supposed to be. Because of humankind’s rebellion against God and fall into sin (Gen. 3), everything and everyone is broken. Because of sin, our default setting is to rebel against God’s good order and design for our sexuality. The cultural narrative is one of the great weapons of deception the enemy uses to steer our kids away from understanding God’s creational place and purpose for sex.
Our responsibility is to teach that God’s place for His good gift of sex is in marriage. God’s design and plan for marriage is that it is to be a committed, lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual, physical union between one man and one woman.
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