The Dual Nature of Flourishing: Part II. From Psalm 73 (through II Corinthians) to Psalm 92—The continual tension between true and counterfeit flourishing
[Reading Time: 18 minutes]
(Re)Introduction: Flourishing…in which dimension?
From the introduction (many months ago) and overview in Part I, we now move to an analysis of each of the four Hebrew words utilized in Psalm 92 to express the distinct dimensions of true versus counterfeit flourishing. The former, as will be our thesis, is centered totally upon Christ with our flourishing being that which we receive from His hand so as to build His eternal, Fourth Dimensional Kingdom here in This Age.
It is given and received in a way that unites the Third and Fourth Dimensions.
The latter, however, is centered upon self with our flourishing being that which we ourselves achieve in our own strength in this fallen, entropic Dimension, which has absolutely no vital connection to the limitless life of the Fourth.
As such, though it may produce a measurable degree of transient flourishing in the here and now, it is, by definition, momentary and fleeting.
But what is more (terrifying), our experience of an evanescent flourishing that is, by definition, cut off from the life of Christ and His Kingdom is not only momentary, but it works into us eternal judgment.
The opening verse of Psalm 92: Which flourishing are we seeking?
This reality is introduced to us at the beginning of Psalm 92, which, we remember from our introductory writing, is entitled “A Psalm for the Sabbath Day” and in which we encounter the four chief Hebrew words for flourishing.
As we work through this Psalm, note at the very outset how the Psalmist calls us to understand and discern which dimension of flourishing we are witnessing:
“A senseless man does not know,
Nor does a fool understand this.
When the wicked spring up (pārakh ) as the grass,
And when all the workers of iniquity do flourish” (tsûts );
What is really happening when we see the wicked seemingly flourish all around us?
Answer:
They are indeed flourishing…but only in this present, temporal dimension…in such a way that secures for them the future reality that
“that they shall be destroyed for ever” (Ps 92:7).
This type of short-term flourishing, in short, leads to everlasting destruction.
The two questions for us, then, as we move through this Psalm of the Sabbath Day-Fourth Dimensional flourishing are
Which flourishing are we finally seeking?
And
Which flourishing are we actually experiencing in the present moment?
Two critical questions, especially when we consider that much of the flourishing offered to us in our church settings may be just this latter type of momentary flourishing that ensures that we will “be destroyed forever”…
The four Hebrew words for flourishing revealing the “continual battle”
In order of their appearance in the Psalm, these four Hebrew verbs are:
There are, of course, other words that express the idea of prospering, (i.e. śāḵal, tsālēakḥ, shalev, cf. Josh 1:7-8), etc., etc.; yet these four Hebrew words act, we might say, as a compass directing us into the four dimensions both of true and false flourishing. As discussed in more detail here, there are, according to T. F. Torrance referencing John Craig,
“two contrary images in mankind:
The image of God and the image of the Serpent; and between them there is a ‘continual battle.’”
In Psalm 92 as well as within every genre of Scripture (and nearly every one of our word studies), we encounter these “two contrary images” and the “continual battle” between them.
Psalm 73: A Scriptural background to true and false flourishing
In the text of this Psalm, we find that one dimension of flourishing operates quite comfortably in the “This Now Age.” And it does so to such a degree that on the surface, it appears that the children of this world are, in fact, experiencing real “shalom.”
“For there are no bands in their death:
But their strength is firm.
They are not in trouble as other men;
Neither are they plagued like other men…
They have more than their heart could wish” (Ps 73:4-5, 7).
Yet their heart, fallen and conformed to this passing age (Jer 17:9 -> Mt 15:7-9, 18-20), cannot actually receive into itself true life from the Fourth Dimension; for it must be totally transformed to be able to so bear it (Mt 9:16-17).
Any flourishing, therefore, which they experience in this present age will flow, not out of their connection with the eternal shalom of JHWH, but from their mechanically-produced, third dimensional actions.
Like my youngest son taping a rose to a stick with scotch tape then digging it into the ground in our back yard.
Where temporary flourishing leads us?
Yet were it only that innocent; for the means of securing temporary flourishing in this temporary age takes us down a darker path.
And as the “sentence” for such “evil work” is not “executed speedily,” in the words of the Preacher the “heart” of man becomes “fully set in them to do evil” (Eccl 8:11). In such a state,
“pride serves as their necklace;
Violence covers them like a garment.”
In short,
“Their abundance (kheleb) causes them to do wrong”
because
“their thoughts are sinful.”
The unchallenged mindset resulting from their temporary prospering leads man to
“mock and say evil things”
and even
“proudly threaten violence”
Speaking
“as if they rule in heaven,
and lay claim to the earth” (Ps 73:6-9).
That is to say, even a bit of temporary flourishing for fallen man results in pride and violence and progressive corruption.
But what about the righteous?
When the Psalmist witnesses their near continuous prospering, he himself honestly admits,
“But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled;
My steps had nearly slipped.”
And why exactly?
For I was envious of the boastful (comp. Ps 37:1),
When I saw the prosperity (shalom) of the wicked” (73:2-3)…
For on the surface of things, all that he saw was that
“…the ungodly…are always at ease/quiet/safety/prospering (shalev)
in this life as
“they increase in riches...” (73:12).
From Psalm 73 to II Corinthians: A different pathway to flourishing
This is what the Psalmist sees:
The ungodly prospering in their thought lives of sin that bring forth, not judgment, but increasing degrees of riches in This Now Age.
While he, on the other end of the spectrum, experiences here and now nothing but plagues and chastening:
“For all day long I have been plagued,
And chastened every morning” (73:14).
If we move forward to the Apostle Paul we see this suffering only intensified.
He did not experience the “ease/quiet/safety/prospering” (shalev) of Psalm 73:12, which we repeat, is of “the ungodly.”
Rather, he seemed to continually find himself
“in perils of waters,
in perils of robbers,
in perils of my own countrymen,
in perils of the Gentiles,
in perils in the city,
in perils in the wilderness,
in perils in the sea,
in perils among false brethren;
[For as he pronounces regarding these “false brethren”, they are those who preach “another Jesus” by a “different spirit” and a “different gospel” because they themselves are, in point of fact, “false apostles, deceitful workers”, who “transform themselves into apostles of Christ” and “ministers of righteousness” just as their father, Satan, who “transforms himself into an angel of light” so as to deceive synagogue- and churchgoers alike (II Cor 11:4, 13-15).]
And while these “false brethren” are by all outward appearances prospering, he himself as a genuine Apostle, meanwhile continues
in weariness and toil,
in sleeplessness often,
in hunger and thirst,
in fastings often,
in cold and nakedness” (II Cor 11:26-27).
To which, after this extensive catalog of hardships and trials, we ask the very simple question:
Does our conception of flourishing include all of these pathways?
More specifically,
Does our mental model of a “flourishing life” have in it “sleeplessness” or “weariness and toil” or “cold and nakedness”?
In Paul’s mind, it certainly did.
(And it did in the life of the Saints from Abba Anthony to Seraphim of Sarov [if you are Orthodox or Catholic] or in 19th century pioneering missionaries from Adoniram Judson to Hudson Taylor [if you are Protestant.
And which Hans Selye, the “Father of stress research,” who was nominated for 17 Nobel Prizes from 1949–1953 with a research corpus that would result in over 1700 publications, clearly documented...)
To such a degree that he even goes so far as to declare,
“If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern…
…my infirmity” (asthéneia, 11:30).
He will give us more background in the next chapter; for, it seems, that Paul did not, however, start out with this mindset.
From Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” back to the Psalmist’s revelation “in the sanctuary of God”
Yet for Paul these trials and battles (earlier in the letter summarized as “battles without and fears within”) had the effect of opening him up to
“God, who comforts the downcast” (II Cor 7:5-6).
For when he is taken up to glories of the “third heaven” (which we are calling the Fourth Dimension) he experiences the refining fires of testing as he enters back down into the Third.
And so,
“lest” lest he “should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations,
"a thorn in the flesh was given” to him, which was none other than “a messenger of Satan to buffet” him,
“lest” he “be exalted above measure” (12:7).
This is how Paul was led into flourishing.
As one pastor has said, even the hardships are given to us from the loving hand of our Father to draw us out of patterns in our lives which will lock us in the Third Dimension.
That being the case, however, it is still exceedingly difficult.
And so the Apostle
“pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from” him (12:8),
Yet he came to find in/through/precisely because of the painful trial this extraordinary reality:
“My grace is sufficient for you,
for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
To which he then says once again,
“Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities,
that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (12:9).
How does the OT Psalmist comes to his own understanding of this paradoxical truth?
We return now back to the Psalmist, who sees the prosperity of the wicked and begins to think to himself as the darkness grows all around him,
“Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain (riyq),
And washed my hands in innocence.
For all day long I have been plagued,
And chastened every morning” (Ps 73:13-14).
What we come to find in this Psalm which is reinforced and expanded further in Psalm 92, is that the appearance of shalom, experienced temporarily among “false brethren” within This Now Age leads, not to flourishing but to nothing more than a “sprouting up” (Pārakh) only to be “destroyed forever” (92:7).
Yet this paradigm-shifting understanding requires that we first enter “into the sanctuary of God.”
The pathway through
To come to this conclusion, which is so counter to our immediate experience, requires, in short, that we go
“into the sanctuary of God”
For it is only in the sanctuary, or to return to the title of Psalm 92, it is only by entering into the Sabbath praise of JWHW that we can finally with confidence come to say,
“Then I understood their end” (Ps 73:17).
And what is the end of those who seem to be flourishing now?
It is, we come to find, a deep paradox:
The rise to the heights of flourishing fueled by deceitful desires of a wicked heart will be the very thing that will cast them down to the depths of eternal destruction.
For, as the Psalmist comes to recognize,
“Surely You set them in slippery places;
You cast them down to destruction.
Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment!” (73:18-19)
True flourishing, however, operates in a totally different dimension.
In the words of the Psalmist, God’s people will ever live to
“declare the Khesed Mercy” of JHWH and finally
“triumph in the work of [His] hands” (92:2, 4).
It is not a unidimensional flourishing that is nothing other than a temporarily-not-suffering life.
Which begs the question for us:
Is our understanding in modern medicine or ministry that the true use of the healing arts is, in the words of Huxley’s world controller,
“to abolish the slings and arrows”?
We will come back to this question in later writings. For now we return to Psalm 92, where we will steer towards a conclusion.
The trials of the Psalmist opening him to the Fourth Dimensional praise of God’s eternal Kingdom
Having been through the experiences of plagues and chastening in this world, the Psalmist enters “into the Sanctuary” of JHWH where he receives the life-giving perspective of a divine understanding.
A new vantage point from which to see reality.
A Fourth Dimensional perspective, we might say, that leads into Fourth Dimensional praise.
So he declares,
“It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;
To declare Your covenant mercies (khesed) in the morning,
And Your faithfulness every night”
Why?
(And as above, notice the shift in the subject from ‘I’ to ‘You.’)
“For You, Lord, have made me glad through Your work.”
Therefore
“I will triumph in the works of Your hands.
O Lord, how great are Your works!
Your purposes are very deep.
He is fully taken up into other-worldly praise which separates him from the
“brutish man” who “does not know”
And divides him from the
“fool” [who is temporarily flourishing in This temporary Now Age and, therefore, does not] “understand this” (Ps 92:1-2, 4b-6).
Critical insights from Spurgeon
Spurgeon has nothing short of critical insights here:
“The unbelieving heart, let it boast as it will, does not know; and with all its parade of intellect, it does not understand.
A man must either be a saint or a brute, he has no other choice; his type must be the adoring seraph, or the ungrateful swine.
So far from paying respect to great thinkers who will not own the glory or being of God, we ought to regard them as comparable to the beasts which perish, only vastly lower than mere brutes, because their degrading condition is of their own choosing.
O God, how sorrowful a thing it is that men whom thou hast so largely gifted, and made in thine own image, should so brutify themselves that they will neither see nor understand what thou hast made so clear.”
And regarding the next lines of the Psalm quoted above,
“When the wicked spring up (pārakh) like grass,
And when all the workers of iniquity flourish (tsûts),
It is that they may be destroyed forever” (92:7).
Spurgeon writes,
“hastening on their progress like verdant plants, which come to perfection in a day, “and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish”; flowering in their prime and pride, their pomp and their prosperity; “they shall be destroyed for ever.”
They grow to die, they blossom to be blasted.
They flower for a short space to wither without end.
Greatness and glory are to them but the prelude of their overthrow.
The believer’s progressively experiential understanding that sin’s continued action in his mind and heart works to cut him off from the source of life so that, severed from the vine, whatever life he still loves will begin to wither away.”
The “great fact” of the Psalm
In this frame of “experiential understanding” that we come to the central verse of Psalm 92:
“But You, Lord, are on high forevermore” (92:8).
Spurgeon again comments,
“This is the middle verse of the Psalm, and the great fact which this Sabbath song is meant to illustrate.
God is at once the highest and most enduring of all beings. Others rise to fall, but he is the Most High to eternity.”
JHWH reigns in the Fourth Dimension over all space and time.
And He draws us into this new dimensional life through the continual act of praise.
While the workers of iniquity are left in this world of entropy, cut off from this continual source of life:
“For behold, Your enemies, O Lord,
For behold, Your enemies shall perish;
All the workers of iniquity shall be scattered” (Ps 92:9).
The final Hebrew words for flourishing in the closing lines
The Psalmist continues,
“But my horn You have exalted like a unicorn;
I have been anointed with oil of vitality (ra’ănān, 92:10).
My eye also has seen my desire on my enemies;
My ears hear my desire on the wicked
Who rise up against me (92:11).
And Spurgeon
“It is a wonder full of instruction and warning. Observe it, O ye sons of men;
‘for, lo, thine enemies shall perish’;
they shall cease from among men, they shall be known no more.
In that the thing is spoken twice it is confirmed by the Lord, it shall surely be, and that speedily.
‘All the workers of iniquity shall be scattered’;
their forces shall be dispersed, their hopes broken, and themselves driven hither and thither like chaff before the tempest.
They shall scatter like timid sheep pursued by the lion, they will not have the courage to remain in arms, nor the unity to abide in confederacy.
The grass cannot resist the scythe, but falls in withering ranks, even so are the ungodly cut down and swept away in process of time, while the Lord whom they despised sits unmoved upon the throne of his infinite dominion.”
The closing lines of this 92nd Psalm of Flourishing revealing why the righteous flourish?
This brings us to the closing lines of the Psalm where he see the three final uses of these Hebrew verbs for flourishing.
In comparison to the opening lines spoken of the wicked springing up in a moment,
“The righteous shall flourish (pārakh) like the palm tree:
He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon” (92:12).
Unlike the sons of This Age that will wither like the grass,
“Those that be planted in the house of the Lord
Shall flourish (pārakh) in the courts of our God” (92:13).
And their flourishing shall not wither away; but
“They shall still bring forth fruit (nûb) in old age;
Enriched shall they be and flourishing” (ra’ănān, 92:14).
This is where we find the ultimate reason that any of us truly flourish:
To shew that the Lord is upright:
He is my rock,
And there is no unrighteousness in him.
And this is the exact place where the Psalmist of Psalm 73 finishes and where we will close this writing:
“My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For indeed, those who are far from You shall perish;
You have destroyed all those who desert You for harlotry.
But it is good for me to draw near to God;
I have put my trust in the Lord God,
That I may declare all Your works” (Ps 73:26-28).
Amen.
So let it be!