The Dream of Life

Psalm 73.20

What happens when the dream of life is over and the reality of God’s existence dawns? The Psalmist describes the futility of a life lived without God, and the inevitability of final judgement. Will we face Christ the Lord as our Saviour or as our Judge?

‘As a dream, when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.

That’s our title this evening, The Dream of Life. But I go back to the beginning of the Psalm and the first verse, ‘truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart.’ This is about a psalmist’s momentary fall into doubt and confusion. And he’s open about it, and he tells us about it and the cause of it, and how he recovered from it. And it’s so helpful to us, because it’s really all about knowing, finding the Lord. It’s a psalm of Asaph. Well, there were 12 psalms of Asaph, and you can’t be absolutely sure whether it’s a psalm of David or a psalm of Asaph, because the old view was once that pretty well all the Psalms, including Asaph’s, were by David. And it was thought that where you find a psalm of Asaph, well, he was David’s chief musician, the leader of the principal choirs. And it used to be thought, well, perhaps it’s a psalm of David, but the musical setting is by Asaph, and that’s what is attributed to him. So it could be, like others, a psalm of David, or it could be by the musician Asaph, who was also a prophet and a seer.

But whichever psalmist, this is their experience, and it’s helpful to us. What I’m going to do, an unusual thing, I’m going to go through the whole psalm, if possible, very quickly. But that first verse is an affirmation, because some doubting things are going to be said. The psalmist, first of all, makes his current position absolutely clear. Truly, surely, certainly, I’ve proved this, I’ve found this. I’m not wavering from this any more. So he starts with a positive note. God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart, which indicates not the whole of Israel..