July 28, Morning

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"So foolish was I, and ignorant; I was as a beast before Thee." — Psalm 73:22 · KJV

Remember, this is the confession of the man after God's own heart; telling us his inner life, he writes, "So foolish was I, and ignorant." The word "foolish" here means more than in ordinary speech. Earlier in the psalm he writes, "I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked," which shows the folly he meant had sin in it. He sets himself down as "so foolish," and how foolish he could not tell. It was a sinful folly, not to be excused by frailty but condemned for its willful ignorance, for he had envied the prosperity of the ungodly, forgetting the dreadful end awaiting them. And are we better than David, that we should call ourselves wise? Do we profess to have attained perfection, or to have had all our willfulness taken out of us by the rod? That were pride indeed. If David was foolish, how foolish should we appear in our own eyes if we could but see ourselves! Look back, believer: think of your doubting God when He was so faithful to you; of your foolish cry, "Not so, my Father," when He crossed His hands in affliction to give you the larger blessing; of the many times you read His providences in the dark and groaned, "All these things are against me," when they were all working together for your good; of how often you chose sin for its pleasure, when that pleasure proved a root of bitterness. Surely, if we know our own hearts, we must plead guilty to a sinful folly; and conscious of it, we must make David's resolve our own: "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel."