Psalm 73

Well, good morning. It's a joy to be with you. It's been two years since my wife and my kids and I could worship with you on a Sunday morning. And so it's just a joy whenever we come back from the field to see what God has done in building his church and to renew friendships and acquaintances. I'm very good friends with the pastors of your church. So Keith and Sam, I've known for years now. And when I think about them, I think about a book I read in seminary that has a chapter title that's always stuck with me. It's called Why I Don't Want a Cool Pastor. Why I Don't Want a Cool Pastor. And what sticks with me about this chapter, what the author is saying is that it's attractive when you're looking for a pastor to look for sharpness and humor and wittiness and just kind of external things. What you want deep down, what you want most significantly is a pastor who loves the church, who's willing to give their life for the church. And as I think about Keith and Sam, that's what's always struck me about them. They live to serve the church and love the church. And so I know that you know that and are experiencing that. But for me to come and be with those brothers and their families, as well as to be with you, is a great joy for me. I was thinking, as we prepare to look at Psalm 73 this morning, that one of the most encouraging things that I think we can do as Christians is to share our testimonies with each other. I don't know if you've ever been in a group. I remember the first time as a new believer at James Madison University, I had heard the gospel as a freshman in college and come to faith. I remember sitting at the dining hall at JMU and somebody at this long table, it was all Christian brothers and sisters, said, why don't we share our testimonies with each other? I didn't really know what that meant, but the first person just began to share what God had done in their life. And then the next person shared in the next person, we went all the way around the table until they were ready to kick us out of the dining hall because it was it was time to leave. But I just remember being struck at how encouraging it was to hear about God's work in all of our lives. There's something similar about all the testimonies. Everybody was saying at some point I was lost. I was broken. I was like an empty vessel. And then God and his grace came along and filled me and changed me because of what Jesus did on the cross. And I just thought, you know, no matter how different we are, that is what brings Christians together. I think other than being encouraging and hope giving, a testimony can also be instructive to us, right? As as we share what God has done in our lives, in times of plenty and in times of wants, We can be instructed how we as Christians are going to persevere. I share that about testimonies because Psalm 73 is a testimony of a man named Asaph. As we look at it, he's going to tell us about what happened in his life and specifically how he came to the brink of spiritual disaster. Experiences in his life led him actually to doubt the goodness of God, and he's going to share with us what God did in his life to bring him back. So let's look and read together from Psalm 73, and then I'll give us an outline for our time. Psalm 73. A Psalm of Asaph. Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. My steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They're not in trouble as others are. They are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore, pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness. Their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice. Loftily, they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens and their tongues struts through the earth. Therefore, his people turn back to them and find no fault in them. And they say, how can God know? Is there knowledge in the most high? Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain have I kept my heart clean. and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long, I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I had said I will speak thus, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned their end. Truly, you set them in slippery places. You make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors. Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast towards you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell. of your works. I want to look at this psalm in three parts. I'll give you our outline. If you're taking notes, it may be helpful to you to write these down. I want us to think about how trust erodes, how trust can erode in our Christian lives. Secondly, I want to think about how we can build a retaining wall. for our faith, and that'll make sense as we get there. How can we can build a retaining wall for our faith? And then third and finally, a faith that lasts. What is a faith that's going to last us through this life? So first, how trust erodes, looking at the first 15 verses. And I thought of this image because I was spending some time with my mom. She lives on the Chesapeake Bay in Kilmarnock, Virginia. We spent the last few days with with her. And as we would kayak down the river and in the different inlets, I was just looking at the trees that grew on the river's edge. You know, if you've ever had a house that's on the river, one of the most important things for you to have is a retaining wall. So the houses that had built a retaining wall, the bank is strong and secure and trees can grow right up to the edge. But in the places where there's no retaining wall, the trees eventually, as the river would erode the soil from under them, they look kind of funny because half the tree has roots that are just kind of out in midair. And some of the trees begin to lean over and some of them have fallen into the water. And as I thought about that, I thought about this man Asaph and the testimony he shares, because he's basically telling us that over time his faith was like the soil under the tree of his life and it had eroded. Let's look at the verses and go through the first 15 there and see how that happened. He starts off by saying, surely or truly, God is good in Israel to those who are pure in heart. Asaph was a minister of God. He was a songwriter and someone appointed by David to minister before the Ark of the Covenant. So he was familiar with doctrine, and he gives us good, solid doctrine here. God is good to the believer. That's something we could say amen to, right? We could think of God's goodness to us. We would all want to say yes, God is good to the believer, to the one who trusts in him. But in verse two, there's a contrast that's immediately entries. But he says, as for me, my feet has almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped. And why was that? He says that he was envious of the wicked. I don't know if envy is a sin that you would say you struggle with. It simply means that you see what another person has and you want it. You compare yourself with this other person, and in comparison, you seem lacking. And so you want what they have. It's a cousin to the sin of covetousness. The 10th commandment tells us we should not covet. But Asaph says, I envied the arrogant. Well, why would he do that? Let's look there in the verses that follow. Verse 4, he's looking, I don't know, at one person around him. or a group of people, these people he's called the wicked or the arrogant. I think he just means the people who are not trusting God around him. And he says that they have no pangs until death. In verse four, their bodies are fat and sleek. So he looks at their health and he says, well, they're in great health. Then in verse five, he says they're not in trouble as others are. They're not stricken like the rest of mankind. You want to say, OK, come on. He's not saying they have no trouble, but from his perspective, he's just looking at their life and he's saying they have health and they have success. The result of that health and success for these people who are not trusting God is that they're proud. Look there in verse six. Pride is like a necklace to them and and violence then is like a garment. It's the clothing that they're wearing that the pride of their success in life is meaning that they don't care about other people. They're willing to be violent even in their oppression of people. In verse seven, it says their eyes swell out through fatness. I think that's an idiom that is pointing to the idea that that whatever they lay their eyes on, they seem to be able to get. Have you ever known somebody in life that just whatever they put their hand to seems to succeed, the road just seems to rise to meet them? Well, that's what Asaph is observing in these people. They then are willing to boast about this. They set their mouth against the heavens. Verse nine, their tongue struts through the earth. And then in the conclusion of his description of these people in verse 11 and 12, they even boasting, they say, how can God know? I don't know if these people were saying that out loud, but we can relate to a culture around us in which many people, at least in the way they're living their lives, just acting like God doesn't matter. They don't have to give a thought to what God would say about the way they're living. And that's what these people were doing, his conclusion there is that they are always at ease in verse 12, they increase in riches. So there it is, this is what ASAP sees, I wonder if you would say you can see the same thing around you. Surely all of us know people, many of the people around us seem to give no thought to God. The danger is not the existence of these people, but that ASAP is envying them. And that's our danger as well. We can look at their life and we can compare ourselves and we can ask the question, has it been really worth it to follow God? That's the question I want us to think about for a minute. Do we believe it's worth it to follow God? Are you ever tempted to envy the people around you? We can see that this wasn't a surface struggle for Asaph. He even says there that day by day, he he's been stricken in verse 14 and rebuked every morning. He comes right up to the edge of of faith. A precipice is there before him. His feet, he feels like are slipping. And he's asking himself this question. Well, I want to stop there. That's really the first point is just to observe how trust can erode. I want to make some observations. And the first thing I want to say is, isn't it wonderful that a chapter like this is in the Bible? This is almost permission for us to be honest about what we go through in life. He's being honest about his struggle before God. I remember a seminary professor in colleges or in seminaries, he would often talk about the Gospels. He would say one of the truest marks of authenticity of the Gospels is how often the writers record their own faults. You know, if you if you were trying to start a religion and you were kind of a founder and the person who's going to talk about it, you would want to emphasize your strengths. You would never want to share your weaknesses. But that's not what we see in the Gospels, is it? Men like Peter, James and John, their their struggles, their trials are on display for all to see. And I think it's the same here in the psalm. This psalmist is a godly man, but he's a man who's being honest about his struggles. But a couple of things I think we should notice in this first section is the danger of envy in particular. He says he envied the wicked. It wasn't just that he was having a theological debate. God, I know that Psalm 1 says that you bless the godly and you curse the wicked. But that doesn't seem to be playing out in my experience. Why am I looking and not seeing all of the godly have a successful life and all of the wicked be cursed? It's not just a theological debate for him. It's something that his heart is caught up in. He's wondering if it would be better to be in their shoes. Brothers and sisters, have you ever seen the success of another person and felt envy towards them? Not happiness in their success, but a twinge of I'm not so happy about that. When you lay eyes on the possessions of another or the abilities that somebody else have, are you ever tempted to say, I wish that were me. I think that the first section here reminds us that we need to be on guard against the sin of envy that the book of Peter, first Peter two one says that we should get rid of all envy. Another thing I think we should notice in this first section is that sin can distort our perception of reality. I don't know if you as we read through that description, if you felt like ASAP, it's a bit over the top. Come on, nobody's life. underneath is without trouble. But I think when we begin to focus on one particular thing and compare maybe our struggles to it, we can lose sight of the fact that everyone in this fallen world goes through struggles. Nobody's life is always at ease. But finally, I think in this first section, we should notice that comparing ourselves with other people is a danger to be avoided. I remember hearing a speaker one time who was a a PhD in church history who would come to conferences and basically just share biographical sermons about some of the greats from church history. And we had a question and answer time with this guy one time. And my friend asked the question we were all thinking about, which was, does it ever put you under the pile to struggle these great men? to just read about these people who did great things for God and trusted him to the ends of the earth. And the speaker kind of got a funny look on his face, and I'll never forget what he said. He said, I've just never found it very helpful to compare myself to anyone else. I've never found it helpful to compare myself to anyone. And for you kind of go, huh? Isn't that why we we read biographies of great people? Isn't that why you come in and share about people? We're inspired as we hear about Adoniram Judson or as we hear about Jim Elliott or some of the greats from church history. But I understood his point. He meant that each of us has a calling from God that he he wants us to play. Not all of us are called to to be a pastor or to be a missionary or to to be the one to lead people to faith. Some of us are called to simply be faithful in our evangelism and not see much fruit or to be faithful in the role that God has called us to. So I think we're reminded here of the danger of comparing ourselves with anyone else. Well, that's the first thing we see in Psalm 73, that our trust can be eroded if we are envious and if we compare ourselves. The second thing I want us to look at, starting in verse 16 there, is how you build a retaining wall for your faith. As I described in that opening illustration, if the trees are growing next to the river and if there's the potential of having the soil of faith eroded, well, how do you build that retaining wall? What is going to shore up our faith for the struggles we face in life? Starting there in verse 16, he shares what it was for him. So Asaph said, when I sought to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God, until he came to church. It was in the sanctuary of God that something changed for him. Well, what was it? Look there in verse 17, he says, I discerned their end. Truly, you set them in slippery places, you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by tears. What he realized, what he came back to, is the gospel. He came back to the fact that the only thing that is going to save us in the end is knowing God. Apart from God, the only thing people can expect is judgment. And it came, I'm sure, as a rebuke to him as he began to realize that the very people that he was envying were people who were in need of his compassion. There was nothing to be envied about a prosperity that is short lived, that is in this life only for on the day when judgment comes just like that in a moment, he says it's like a dream when one awakes in verse 20. You know, you wake up and you can vaguely remember that you are having a dream, but it's slipping away from you just that fast. That is what it's going to be like on the day when God comes and judges. So I think that's the first thing that shores up our faith is to get a perspective from the end and to think about what will matter to us at the end of our life. The second thing I think that helped him shore up his faith and build a retaining wall. Was meeting with God. Meeting with God, he comes into the sanctuary, not he doesn't just mean that he he came to look at the architecture or he he came to go through some ritual or ceremony. I mean, as a minister before the Ark of the Covenant, he would have often been in the sanctuary. But he's referring to a specific time when he came into the sanctuary and he felt like God met with him. I wonder if you ever feel like that as you come to church. It's so easy as the hymns become familiar and the order of service is about the same every week. It's easy for us to just go through the motions sometimes, isn't it? But Christian friends, let's remember that first and foremost, we come here because we want to meet with God. We want to hear him speak to us from his word. We want to sing back to him praises that come from an overflow of our heart. But this is a time when we want to meet with God. I wonder if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian. I wonder how that sounds to you, that language of meeting with God. I think it's important for you to understand that as Christians, we don't view coming to church as some sort of ritual we need to do to appease the deity. This is not just a ceremony for us. There's not a list of things that we believe we have to do to become right with God. Now, as Christians, what we understand is that God has made a way for us to know him. He's made a way for us to have a personal relationship with him. And that's through the sending of his son, Jesus, who came to live the life that you and I should have lived a life according to the law of God. Faithful to the commandments of God, a life we haven't lived, Jesus came to live that life so that he could then die the death that you and I deserve because of our sins. It's through that living of a perfect life and dying of a substitutionary death that we as human beings can be reconciled back to our creator and our father. And so in that personal relationship, we understand that coming to church on Sunday morning is a chance to know that God better, to to meet with him in a personal way. Christian brother and sister, I wonder if that is your perspective this morning, that the most important thing you can do at the start of a new week is come and meet with God. That is something that's going to shore up our faith, no matter what we're going through, no matter what doubts begin to creep in. We see what began to happen to ASAP. It might be something different that's eroding our trust this morning. But coming together with the people of God and and even specifically to lock arms with the local church and become a member of that local church is something we do to to build a hedge of protection around us. I can never go longer than a week. without being reminded of what is true because of my membership in a local church. So that's the second thing that shores up the retaining wall of our faith. I think a third thing we see in this section is that we can reflect on God's past goodness to us. If Asaph's doubt was that God is good to the believer, well, look at him begin as he as he first remembers the end. He then is able to reflect back on God's goodness to him in the present. Look there in verse 23 and 24. He says, nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me into glory right there in two verses. He he he's able to think now of three ways that God is good to him right now today. And the reasons that God is good to us, aren't they? First, that God is with us. His perspective on himself beginning to slip and slide into unbelief actually wasn't the case because all that while God was holding him by the hand. It wasn't just that he stumbled into the sanctuary and met with God. No, God drew him back there. God met with him as he was in the sanctuary. God reminded him of what was true. I think there's no more precious doctrine to the to the believer in Christ than that God will cause us to persevere to the end. No matter how far you may feel from God this morning, if you're his child, he is holding you by the hand. We sing in the song, Oh, love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee. I love the way J.I. Packer says it. Your faith will not fail while God sustains it. You are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you. Isn't that precious? You are not strong enough to fall away while God is holding you by the hand. So God is with us. Another goodness is that God guides us. He says, you guide me with your counsel. As I think about the difference between my life as a non-Christian and my life afterwards, I often share this with students in China. I had no purpose before. I distinctly remember showing up to freshman orientation at JMU, and the person behind the table was just filling out things about me. And he asked me a question. He was not intending to produce an existential crisis for me, but he asked me, what major do you want to be? And I don't know why I hadn't thought of that beforehand. My parents had not given me any perspective on that. And I just remember staring at him and saying, I don't know. And he said, well, I have to put something down. You can change it later. But I remember this was my thought process, I thought. Doctors and lawyers have a lot of money. I passed out at the sight of blood. So then I asked the guy, what do lawyers major in? And he said political science. I said, put it down. Now, That that sounds funny now, but I was lost as a college freshman. I had no idea why I existed. And as I meet with college students in China, they're the same way they've been told their whole lives that there is no God, that they're the the product of random chemical reactions and an evolution that there's no real purpose to their living. And so I often will simply leading to sharing Christ with them by asking them, what is your life dream? Why do you, what's your purpose in life? They look like a deer in the headlights. Now these are students who have passed, they've spent their entire lives studying for the college entrance exam, which in a pure meritocracy, nothing else matters but your score on one test. Can you imagine 18 years of your life building towards your performance in three hours one Friday? They call it Black June because it's it's a nightmare for these students to face. But they've passed this test. They've gotten into one of the top colleges in their country. And then you ask them, what's your dream? What do you want to do now? Do you know what they say? They say, I want to pass the test to get into graduate school. That's not an answer. For many of them, that's enough to begin at least awakening conversation. But my point is to say how precious it is to us as believers in the word Jesus Christ, you know why we were created to worship God and serve him and know him. We are guided by God's counsel. We have his hand guiding us through our lives. That's a precious truth. That is evidence of God's goodness us this morning. The third thing he mentions that is God's goodness now to us is that afterwards you will receive me into glory. He's thinking about the fact that I know in the future I will be with God in glory. Our communion with God is never at the mercy of death. It's never at the mercy of death. You cannot finally kill a Christian. You can only send them to glory. Do you know there's one doctrine that in government churches in China, pastors are forbidden to preach on? It's on the second coming of Christ, because the Communist Party understands what happens when a group of people begin living like they believe afterwards they're going to go to glory. You can't control such a people anymore. They're willing to sacrifice, they say, imprison me, threaten me. That's fine. Afterwards, I'm going to go and be with God in glory. Those are all precious truths that the psalmist recovers as he begins to reflect on God's goodness to him. So I think all of those things help us to begin to build a retaining wall for our faith. And I want to challenge us this morning to reflect on God's goodness to us, to think about meeting with God and to be reminded of what is happening in the end. That judgment will happen for the unbeliever, but we will be received into glory. Well, the third and final section there begins in verse twenty five, and it's really a confession of faith. On the part of ASAP, they're beautiful words that I want to read them again. Whom have I in heaven but you and there is nothing on earth that I desire beside you, my flesh and my heart may fail. But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge or my rock that I may tell of all your works. I think the thing that struck me as I came to this psalm is that those are the only verses I really ever heard quoted from Psalm 73. And I think they are, they're worth memorizing, they're worth writing on a card, they're worth putting on your refrigerator. But I want to notice that these verses, the thoughts and the faith that rests behind these verses come from a process, don't they? They come from the process of a person who's wrestled with his doubts. who's gone through the fire of testing and comes out on the other side and said, now I believe God is good in a way that I couldn't have said I believed it before. Now I'm able to say heaven without God is a waste to me. Do you see that there? Whom have I in heaven but you? He's not thinking about, will I play golf in heaven? He's saying heaven is going to be wonderful because God is there. He's able then to say that earthly troubles seem small now in the light of knowing God. In verse 26. His previous struggles seems smaller and smaller as he now thinks about God's goodness to him. Friends, have you found this to be true in your life that that as you set your gaze upon goodness, God's goodness to you, your troubles don't go away. Let's be honest about that. But they do seem smaller. Don't they? He says that earthly things don't lure him like they did. Earth has nothing I desire besides you. The richest ungodly man on earth becomes like a beggar in this man's eyes. And he begins to consider what he has as great riches. And then in the final pair of verses, verse 27, 28, he sums it up by thinking about the difference between those who are far from God, who will perish, and how good it is to be near God. He says, I've made the Lord my rock, my refuge, and I will tell of all your works. Well, friends, as we think about application for ourselves from this psalm. I think we want to remember that if we live long enough in this world, our faith in the goodness of God will be tested. Many of you would raise your hand and say, yes, I can testify to that. There are tests that come that stretch our confidence in the goodness of God. But we want to end where the soul must end, so how can we do that? How can we get a faith that lasts? I think the first thing is that we have to keep trusting that God is good, even when our circumstances stretch that. Keep holding on. He felt like his feet were slipping, but he never let go of the truth that God is good. to those in Israel who are pure in heart. Keep trusting. The second thing, by way of application, is that we can learn to wear gospel glasses. I think we need to learn to put on the glasses of the gospel, which sees our current struggle in the light of what Jesus did on the cross. You know, we sing hymns like, Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace behind a frowning providence. He hides a smiling face. But how do we know that? How do we know that behind this frowning providence of my current trial is the smiling face of God? Well, the way we know that is by looking at the cross. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also give us all things? He who sent his only son to suffer and die on Calvary. intends your current trial, not for your destruction, but for your refinement and for your good. In the end, he is even now preparing a place for you in heaven. And those gospel classes allow us to persevere through trials to read your struggles with God's goodness in the background. Finally, we can keep our eyes fixed on that day. When God's judgment will come to all people, we think of Jesus words that the sheep and the goats will ultimately be separated on that final solemn day. And all that will matter is trusting in Christ. I plead with you today, if you have not made that decision to put your faith in Christ, there's no more urgent message for you to hear. You see it there in verse 27, those who are far from God shall perish. As certain as we're sitting here today, there there is a day coming when if we stand before God in our sins and don't have a substitutionary sacrifice for those sins, we will be judged and we will be separated from God forever. But friends, if we will trust in Christ, it changes everything. God is willing to draw you near. He's willing to have you be a part of his family. He's willing to adopt you as his son, as his daughter. But you must trust in Christ. For those of us who have, we can say, can't we this morning, that it's good to be near God. It's good as we reflect on the ways he has loved us. And it makes us, as the psalm ends, want to tell others about his wonderful works. That's something I pray that whether it's here in Charlottesville or wherever the Lord has brought you here from, that you'll want to tell of the goodness of God to others. Let's pray together. Our God and Father, we are thankful that you are good to your people. I pray this morning as we meditate on your word, as we think about that goodness, that you would remind us afresh, especially if we're feeling dry this morning. If we have forgotten just how much you have loved us in Christ. And I do pray that you would open eyes and hearts this morning. Many who haven't trusted in you, that they would be saved as they look to Christ. We pray these things in his name. Amen.